The case for non-clinical veterinary CPD
Clinical skill decides what your team can do. Confidence, communication, and a settled nervous system decide what they actually do, on a busy Tuesday, with a full waiting room, when it matters. That is what non-clinical CPD trains, and the evidence says it shows up directly in clinical outcomes, client behaviour, and your bottom line.
Somewhere along the way, CPD got sorted into two piles: the "real" pile (medicine, surgery, technical skills) and the "nice-to-have" pile (communication, confidence, wellbeing, leadership). The evidence does not support that sorting. Neither does the regulator: the RCVS counts non-clinical learning fully towards the annual CPD requirement, precisely because how professionals communicate, cope, and lead is part of professional competence, not an extra.
Every consult is a conversation. Every mistake is processed by a nervous system. Every hard day lands on a human being. It is one thing to know how to work a case up; it is another to ask for help without fear, to hold a difficult conversation about money, to recover from a complaint without sliding into defensive practice. Non-clinical CPD is where those capabilities are built. It is the foundation the clinical skills stand on.
What the evidence shows
Up to 7×
Clients were up to seven times more likely to follow dentistry and surgery recommendations when the vet used relationship-centred communication in the consult. Communication skill is not client service polish; it is clinical compliance.
Kanji, Coe, Adams & Shaw (2012), Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 240(4), 427-436.
19%
Across 106 studies in human medicine, patients of poor communicators carried a 19% higher risk of non-adherence to treatment. And when clinicians were trained in communication, adherence measurably improved. Communication is trainable, and training works.
Zolnierek & DiMatteo (2009), Medical Care, 47(8), 826-834.
$2 billion
Burnout costs the US veterinary industry an estimated $1-2 billion every year in lost revenue, around $17,000-25,000 per affected vet, per year, through reduced hours and turnover. Wellbeing is not a perk line in the budget; it is the budget.
Neill, Hansen & Salois (2022), Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 9:814104.
2×
Physicians experiencing burnout had roughly double the odds of reporting a major medical error in the preceding three months. Exhausted clinicians are not less dedicated; they are less safe, through no fault of their own.
Tawfik et al. (2018), Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 93(11), 1571-1580.
Complaints change clinicians
UK research found that being complained about leaves veterinary professionals fearful, self-doubting and ashamed, driving defensive practice and disengagement. How a team is supported to process complaints and mistakes directly shapes how they practise afterwards.
Gibson, White, Mossop, Oxtoby & Brennan (2022), Veterinary Record, e1737.
Safety cultures learn
Blame and shame cultures are a fundamental barrier to reporting and learning from clinical errors in veterinary practice, while psychologically safe teams surface more errors and learn from them. The workplace's emotional culture is a patient safety system.
Oxtoby & Mossop (2019), Veterinary Record, 184(16), 501; Edmondson (1999), Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383.
In human medicine, primary care doctors who had never faced a malpractice claim communicated measurably differently: more signposting, more checking understanding, more warmth. The stakes of these "soft" skills are anything but soft.
The evidence for coaching itself
Everything above makes the case that communication, confidence and wellbeing shape clinical outcomes. That still leaves a reasonable question: does coaching move any of it? It is a fair thing to ask before spending a training budget. Here is what the research says, including the studies that used control groups.
1,017
In a randomised controlled trial across 26 institutions, women doctors in training who took part in a four-month online group coaching programme showed significant reductions in every measure of burnout, alongside moral injury and impostor feelings, and significant improvements in self-compassion and flourishing, compared with a control group. Online. Group-delivered. Time-limited.
Mann, A. et al. (2023), JAMA Network Open, 6(10), e2335541.
Impostor phenomenon
Employees were randomly assigned to coaching, to training, or to nothing. Only the coaching group showed a sustained reduction in impostor phenomenon scores. The training helped in the moment; the coaching held. This was the first controlled evidence that impostor feelings respond to coaching specifically, and it is worth knowing if you have people on your team quietly convinced they are about to be found out.
Zanchetta, M., Junker, S., Wolf, A.-M. & Traut-Mattausch, E. (2020), Frontiers in Psychology, 11:405.
6 sessions
Doctors randomised to professional coaching saw emotional exhaustion fall while it rose in the control group, with absolute rates of high emotional exhaustion dropping 19.5% in the coached group and rising 9.8% in the controls. Overall burnout fell 17.1% and rose 4.9% respectively. That was six one-hour sessions over five months.
Dyrbye, L.N. et al. (2019), JAMA Internal Medicine, 179(10), 1406-1414.
Every outcome
A meta-analysis of coaching in organisational settings found significant positive effects across all five outcome categories measured, from coping through to goal-directed self-regulation. A later meta-analysis focused exclusively on workplace coaching found the same direction of travel, with the largest effects on affective outcomes and individual-level results. Notably, it found no difference in effect between face-to-face and online delivery.
Theeboom, T., Beersma, B. & van Vianen, A.E.M. (2014), The Journal of Positive Psychology, 9(1), 1-18; Jones, R.J., Woods, S.A. & Guillaume, Y.R.F. (2016), Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 89(2), 249-277.
700%
On the commercial side, a global study conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers found a median return of seven times the initial investment for companies using coaching, with 86% of those able to calculate it reporting they at least made their money back. Separately, Deloitte's UK modelling puts the return on workplace mental health investment at around £4.70 for every £1 spent, and finds that proactive, culture-level approaches return considerably more than reactive support offered once someone is already struggling.
ICF Global Coaching Client Study (2009), conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers and Association Resource Centre; Deloitte (2024), Mental health and employers: the case for investment.
Two things are worth drawing out. The effects hold when coaching is delivered online and in groups, which is how most veterinary teams can realistically access it. And the returns are consistently better when support arrives before someone is in crisis rather than after. Prevention is not only kinder. It is cheaper.
The business case, in plain English
"Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients."
Sir Richard Branson has been saying the quiet part out loud for years. Look after your people and they will want to stay. If they decide not to stay, they will still speak well of you. It is not complicated. It is just human.
Sir Richard Branson
Confidence to act on their competence. The ability to ask for help before something becomes an incident. Nervous system tools for the day that goes sideways. Boundaries that make careers sustainable rather than short.
Communication that survives a busy shift. Psychological safety that means near-misses get named and learned from, not hidden. Colleagues who can have the hard conversation early, kindly.
Clients who trust, comply and return. Fewer complaints handled better. Reduced turnover in a profession where every vacancy costs dearly. A reputation as somewhere people actually want to work.
This is not about doing more. It is about giving brilliant clinical teams the human skills their clinical skills depend on.
You already invest in your team's clinical growth, and you should. But if the barriers in your practice look like hesitancy, overwhelm, communication friction, quiet exhaustion, or good people leaving, then another dentistry course will not touch them. Those are human-skills problems, and they have human-skills solutions with an evidence base behind them. The RCVS counts this learning fully towards CPD hours. The research says it pays for itself in compliance, safety, and retention. And your team feels the difference first.
We are Katie and Claire: two vets with nearly 30 years of combined clinical experience, and the team behind Vet Empowered. Since 2020 we have delivered evidence-based personal development to the people of vetmed, and we are trusted by three of the UK's major corporate graduate schemes. We do things a bit differently here: real, practical, science-backed, and never death-by-PowerPoint soft skills.
Our six-month group coaching and CPD programme: weekly live coaching, six core modules, community and support between sessions. Upwards of 35 hours of CPD. From £1,111 + VAT per person, with discounts for corporate spaces, and many employers fund it.
Find out more about the Signature ProgrammeDownload the Signature Programme PDFBespoke in-person or virtual sessions for teams of 2 to 400, from imposter phenomenon to nervous system regulation to assertive conversations. From £995 + VAT, CPD certificates provided.
Find out more about team workshopsDownload the team CPD and coaching brochureLaser-focused support for individuals, with our accredited veterinary-professional coaching team. Discovery call always included; it matters to us that it is the right fit.
Find out more about 1:1 coachingCoaching is not therapy, counselling, or crisis support. Everyone is different. We can't guarantee specific outcomes, but we can promise we'll be with you every step as long as you keep showing up too. Individual results vary.
"This has changed my life, changed my outlook both at work and home and has quite possibly saved my career that I've always wanted and worked so hard to get to."
"Katie Ford and Claire Grigson, the support that you have given to so many of our recent graduates is absolutely invaluable."
Whether you are a practice leader ready to invest, or a team member building the case, we would love to hear from you. Tell us a little about your practice and what you are noticing, and we will come back to you personally.