Richard Payne awarded Diplomate status

Congratulations to Richard Payne, who has been awarded Diplomate status by the European College of Veterinary Surgeons (ECVS).

This is the highest level of qualification conferred by the ECVS, requiring years of well-defined, specialist training, rigorous surgical case analysis by veterinary peers, and finally an in-depth examination, which takes several days to complete. Richard passed the certifying examination in Zurich last week and is now entitled to be known as European Specialist in Large Animal Surgery (Equine), joining our other surgical Diplomates, Tim Greet, Andy Bathe, Sarah Boys-Smith, and Lewis Smith.

Richard, who is the partner responsible for Rossdales Equine Hospital, is one of the busiest equine surgeons in the UK. Since he joined the practice 16 years ago, he has operated on more than 6,000 horses and ponies . Richard’s routine surgical work includes a huge variety of orthopaedic and soft tissue procedures.

Richard also has a particular interest in standing surgery techniques, which avoid the need for a general anaesthetic. Procedures including sinus surgery, laser surgery, eye removal, and ovary removal (by laparoscopy), which would once have been performed under a general anaesthetic, are now performed routinely in the standing horse, under sedation and local anaesthetic. More recently Richard has developed expertise in removal of painful ‘kissing spines’ from a horse’s back, and even surgical repair of fractured bones, all under local anaesthetic.