Europe creates specialist career pathway for veterinary primary care

30 April 2026

The majority of the profession work and deliver care in general practice. Yet to date, there has been no formal career structure beyond certificate-level qualifications. For ambitious practitioners committed to general practice, opportunities have been limited and the path to specialist recognition did not exist. The lack of recognition and routes for progression has been identified as a major factor impacting retention within the profession.

The European Board of Veterinary Specialisation (EBVS) has granted provisional recognition to a new European College in Veterinary Primary Care – Companion Animals (ECVPC-CA), creating, for the first time, a defined route to European Diplomate status for vets working in general practice. The decision was taken at the EBVS General Assembly in Zagreb.

Central to the College is a competency framework that defines in detail the expertise required of a primary care specialist. Not by listing diseases or procedures, but by mapping the competencies that are unique to generalist expertise: managing patients with multiple morbidities; sustaining care across a patient’s lifetime; making sound decisions under diagnostic constraints; synthesising across disciplines when individually each offers only a partial answer. Together this delivers an explicitly different competency profile from that of a discipline-specific specialist. The primary care specialist develops mastery of breadth, and the framework defines that mastery with a rigour that complements the standards set by existing European specialist colleges.

The approval reflects a growing consensus across Europe, including ongoing work by the RCVS, of the need for GP specialty training and clinical career pathways, and importantly that primary care veterinary medicine deserves the same recognition as any other clinical discipline. The new European College provides international recognition of this need and a clear structure to facilitate ongoing development.

Full EBVS accreditation will follow over a defined development period as the college establishes its formal specialist training programmes.

Amanda Boag, Past President of the RCVS and outgoing Treasurer of EBVS said: “The case for recognising general practice as a specialty has been building in the UK and across Europe, with the RCVS having long championed the recognition of the skills and expertise that primary care vets bring to animal health and welfare every single day. This approval by EBVS marks a defining moment and is truly an exciting moment for our profession. The EBVS team and College Organising Committee have shown great vision and diligent oversight during the development of this proposal over the last year.”