WVC Nashville Is Launching a New Kind of CE. It Actually Tests Whether You Can Do It.
Most continuing education works the same way. You sit in a room. Someone talks. You take notes or you do not. You walk out with CE credits and a vague sense that you absorbed something useful. Whether you can actually execute what you just learned in an exam room on a real patient next Tuesday is between you and the animal. Viticus Group is launching something different at WVC Nashville, and it is worth paying attention to.
What KNACK Tracks Are
KNACK stands for Keys to Navigating and Applying Clinical Knowledge. For the inaugural WVC Nashville conference, running August 15 through 18 at Music City Center, Viticus Group is debuting the first-ever KNACK Tracks — a new continuing education format built around small groups, structured skill-building, and a final practical assessment that determines whether you actually earned the credential.
The structure is distinct from anything else on the WVC Nashville program. A KNACK Track is not a lecture session. It is not a standalone hands-on lab. It combines pre-course work, hands-on lab training, and a final practical assessment into a single comprehensive learning journey. Participants who pass the assessment earn RACE-approved CE credits and a KNACK Track badge and certificate of completion that reflects demonstrated competence, not just attendance.
That last distinction matters. A lot of CE certifies presence. A KNACK Track certifies performance.
"The KNACK Tracks are specially built for those who value low instructor-to-participant ratios and gaining elevated skills that they can put into practice immediately," said Andrea Davis, Chief Executive Officer of Viticus Group. "For nearly a century, Viticus Group has provided world-class veterinary continuing education in Las Vegas. With WVC Nashville, we aren't just expanding our reach, but we are launching another level of excellence."
KNACK Tracks are additional paid products and are not included in standard WVC Nashville conference registration.
The Four KNACK Tracks Available at WVC Nashville
Viticus Group is launching four KNACK Track experiences at WVC Nashville, covering surgical skills, practice operations, and professional development.
Introduction to Stifle Surgery for the Novice Orthopedist: Arthrotomy, Meniscus Management and Extra-Capsular Stabilization Sunday, August 16. Didactic session at Music City Center with a hands-on lab at the new Viticus Group Nashville Center. This track is designed for general practitioners looking to build confidence in stifle surgery before they need it in the OR. The combination of structured didactic content and hands-on lab time in a low-ratio environment makes this one of the highest-value offerings on the Nashville program for clinicians who want to expand their surgical capability.
Urolithiasis Essentials: A Hands-On Surgical Foundations Course for Canine and Feline Patients Monday, August 17. Didactic session at Music City Center with a hands-on lab at the Viticus Group Nashville Center. A focused, practical course for clinicians who want to build surgical confidence in managing uroliths across species with the kind of hands-on repetition that lecture alone cannot provide.
Clinic Social Media Lab: Crafting Your Social Media Success Toolkit Saturday, August 15 at Music City Center. No hands-on lab component. A working session for practice owners, managers, and clinicians who want to build a practical, executable social media strategy rather than sit through another presentation about why social media matters. If you are going to be in Nashville with your team, this is the session that sends everyone home with something they can implement Monday morning.
Veterinary Practice Efficiency Series: The Efficiency Evolution — Turning Insight into Action Monday, August 17 at Music City Center. No hands-on lab component. A practice operations track designed for leaders who want to move beyond identifying inefficiencies and into actually fixing them. The focus is on translating data and insight into workflow changes that make a measurable difference.
The Nashville Center Is Part of the Story
The hands-on lab component of the surgical KNACK Tracks takes place at the new Viticus Group Nashville Center, a cutting-edge bioskills training center approximately five minutes from Nashville International Airport and approximately 15 minutes from Music City Center. A complimentary shuttle service is provided between the conference venue and the Nashville Center.
The Nashville Center is not a temporary pop-up facility built for the conference. It is a permanent addition to Viticus Group's training infrastructure, a second home alongside the Las Vegas Education Center that will operate year-round for hands-on veterinary and human health professional training. Its launch as part of the inaugural WVC Nashville is both a practical resource for conference attendees and a signal of the long-term investment Viticus Group is making in Nashville as a veterinary education hub.
Why This Format Exists
The KNACK Track model reflects a genuine tension in continuing education that anyone who has attended a conference knows is real. CE hours are a regulatory requirement, and fulfilling them is necessary. But the format most CE has historically taken, lectures, slide decks, passive reception of information, was designed to deliver information efficiently, not to build skills that transfer reliably to clinical practice.
Assessment-based CE with limited capacity, structured pre-work, and hands-on components is a fundamentally different model. It is slower. It is more intensive. It costs more than a standard session. And it produces a different kind of outcome. A practitioner who completes a KNACK Track surgical course and passes the practical assessment has demonstrated, in a supervised setting with real hands-on components, that they can execute the skill. That is a different credential than hours logged.
WVC Nashville is already the first new national veterinary continuing education conference launched in more than 40 years. The introduction of KNACK Tracks gives it something genuinely new to offer the profession at the level of how CE actually works, not just where it is held.
How to Register
KNACK Tracks are available as add-on purchases with WVC Nashville conference registration. Space is intentionally limited to maintain the low instructor-to-participant ratios the format requires. If you are planning to attend WVC Nashville and want access to one of the surgical tracks, registering early is the move.
Full conference registration and KNACK Track registration are available at viticusgroup.org. WVC Nashville runs August 15 through 18 at Music City Center in Nashville, Tennessee.
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