4 Oct 2018
This month, RCVS Knowledge writers give RVNs the lowdown on how to obtain and review the very best in CPD.
RCVS Knowledge
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It has been said on average 82,000 papers are produced a year in veterinary medicine and science – that’s around 1,500 papers available for reading each week.
If you wanted to read all of these within your CPD hours, you’d need to read quite quickly – 90 papers a minute, in fact.
So, how does a busy veterinary nurse keep up to date with all the important papers that have been published? One solution is to let others do some of the hard work by keeping an eye on the veterinary journals for you.
inFOCUS is a journal watch; a service that does exactly what it says – “watches” journals. Subscribers to inFOCUS receive a bimonthly email giving summaries of the best, most impactful recent articles, together with useful take-home messages – just enough information for you to decide whether you want to read the full article.
inFOCUS is produced by RCVS Knowledge’s Library and Information Service, which keeps an eye on all newly published material in more than 100 journals, compiling a long list of the most important new evidence in the process.
Every two months, this list is narrowed down to a shortlist of around 15 articles using a scoring system based on overall quality and relevance.
The articles on the shortlist are then assessed by an independent Clinical Review Team, which marks them on their:
Summaries are then written for the top five or six articles and sent out in the following edition of inFOCUS, ensuring practitioners have the best evidence when they need it.
In the past year, inFOCUS has highlighted research and recommendations on a range of topics relevant to veterinary nurses, including the use of sepsis bundles, wound management and the role of the veterinary nurse in educating owners about prepubertal feline neutering.
Topics are also put “In the Spotlight” – in this section you can find relevant research, supporting information, and details of relevant podcasts and webinars all on one overarching subject. Recent topics include the many roles of a veterinary nurse, and the management of CKD in cats and dogs.
Past issues of inFOCUS are archived on an accompanying website, where they are categorised by subject with accompanying tags so you can easily find what you are looking for.
