When a client or colleague raises a thought-provoking query, providing an informed response requires being on top of the best available evidence for that topic.

But for busy veterinary professionals, keeping up to date with the latest and best available evidence – as well as finding concise answers to specific clinical queries – is not an easy challenge.

As a VN, you are at the forefront and will inevitably come across queries where you are unsure of the evidence. An example might be where a client comes to you and asks for your thoughts on whether pressure vests help alleviate stress and anxiety in dogs, as their dog tends to be fearful of thunderstorms.

Starting point

A starting point could be to search for a review paper or knowledge summary that specifically looks at the evidence surrounding the clinical query – in this case, whether pressure vests alleviate stress in dogs.

However, what do you do if no paper summarising the evidence has been written? The next step could be to search and appraise the literature to summarise the evidence and have it written up as a knowledge summary – you could do this yourself¹.

But, for a busy VN, doing so for every clinical query you encounter is not a feasible option.

So, how can you get an answer to your clinical query without having to find the evidence yourself?

One solution is to share your query with the rest of the veterinary community – the chances are someone else is interested in the same question and may have time to answer it.

To make it easy for you to share your queries, RCVS Knowledge has created an online form² that takes your clinical query and turns it into an answerable question. To do this, we use the PICO method:

• Patient or Population
• Intervention(s)
• Comparison
• Outcome

Example

Applying the aforementioned pressure vest example, the PICO would be:

• Patient or Population: fearful or anxious dogs
• Intervention: pressure vests
• Comparison: no pressure vests
• Outcome: reduction in stress

Meanwhile, as an answerable research question, it would look like this:

In fearful or anxious dogs, does wearing a pressure vest, compared to not wearing one, result in reduced signs of stress?

Turning a clinical query into an answerable question like this is an important step, as it helps ensure all relevant articles are found and reduces the chance of leaving out any important evidence when searching literature.

All questions will be checked and, if they have not been answered before, added to the list of questions³ on the Veterinary Evidence website, where they will be available for anyone in the veterinary community to answer as a knowledge summary.

So, the next time you have a clinical query you would like the evidence to, simply submit it to Veterinary Evidence for it to be answered as a Knowledge Summary.