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Background: Veterinary practice staff are directly involved in the dispensing of prescription veterinary medicines (POM‐Vs) to farmers as prescribed by registered veterinary surgeons to animals 'under their care'. The role of veterinary practice staff has, to date, been underresearched. The objective of this study was to investigate the roles played by veterinary practice staff, exploring their expectations and perceptions of the front‐of‐house (FoH) role, their interactions with clients in day‐to‐day veterinary practice and their experiences relating to the dispensing of POM‐Vs. Methods: Thematic analysis was used to analyse data from 20 semi‐structured interviews of veterinary practice staff. Participants were recruited from 80% of the large animal or mixed species veterinary practices across Wales. Results: Four key themes—'piggy in the middle', learning on the job, practice organisation and facilitating change—were identified, illustrating the multifaceted and diverse nature of this type of employment. Limitations: This study is not intended to be representative of the perceptions of FoH staff on the dispensing of antimicrobials. Larger‐scale studies are required to substantiate these findings. Conclusion: Understanding the roles of non‐clinical veterinary staff allows practice managers and veterinary surgeons to better identify and meet training and staffing needs and improves recognition of this key area of practice work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Antimicrobial use in agriculture has been identified as an area of focus for reducing overall antimicrobial use and improving stewardship. In this paper, we outline the design of a complex antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) intervention aimed at developing a national Veterinary Prescribing Champion programme for Welsh farm animal veterinary practices. We describe the process by which participants were encouraged to design and deliver bespoke individualised AMS activities at practice level by forging participant "champion" identities and communities of practice through participatory and educational online activities. We describe the key phases identified as important when designing this complex intervention, namely (i) involving key collaborators in government and industry to stimulate project engagement; (ii) grounding the design in the literature, the results of stakeholder engagement, expert panel input, and veterinary clinician feedback to promote contextual relevance and appropriateness; and (iii) taking a theoretical approach to implementing intervention design to foster critical psychological needs for participant motivation and scheme involvement. With recruitment of over 80% of all farm animal practices in Wales to the programme, we also describe demographic data of the participating Welsh Veterinary Prescribing Champions in order to inform recruitment and design of future AMS programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]