11 Nov 2020
Evidence-based veterinary medicine is about everyone contributing to our knowledge. Kit Sturgess, editor-in-chief of RCVS Knowledge’s open access journal Veterinary Evidence, encourages VNs to get involved.
Kit Sturgess
Job Title
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Evidence-based veterinary medicine (EBVM) is often thought of in terms of what has been published relating to a particular disease or presentation, but EBVM is a whole lot more than this – and veterinary nurses have a critical role in creating, applying and auditing the evidence to ensure our patients receive the best possible care available.
EBVM is not a single track to managing a specific patient – it is a whole series of evidential steps that should be based not only on the condition for which the patient is being treated, but the impact the patient and the owner have on how that evidence is applied.
Imagine a treatment choice that requires owners to provide chronic medication three or more times a day, while published evidence suggests owner compliance is poor. The decision whether to provide that treatment is not only affected by its medical efficacy (how much better is this treatment compared to alternatives), but also by the owner’s ability to administer and pay for that treatment. The eventual choice requires an understanding of the disease, the evidence, the owner and the patient, making it a team decision into which everyone should, and can, have input.
Veterinary Evidence is an open-access, peer-reviewed online journal owned and published by RCVS Knowledge. Content is published relating to EBVM and its application in veterinary practice to enhance the quality of care provided to patients. The journal is aimed at vets, VNs, paraprofessionals and allied professions in the international veterinary community.
The journal accepts a wide variety of papers, including Knowledge Summaries (short critical summaries of the best available information on a defined clinical question), clinical audits, guidelines and teaching articles relevant to veterinary practice, which stretch well beyond purely clinical conditions; for example, economics, team welfare and quality improvement.
The range of journal material relevant to VNs is far-reaching – from Knowledge Summaries comparing the safety of alfaxalone and propofol as anaesthetic induction agents in bitches undergoing c-section, to investigations into the ecological impact of woven and disposable drapes.
EBVM is not just about reading what others have written, but about everyone contributing to our knowledge. I bet everyone reading this article will have reflected over the past week on what evidence supports some aspect of what they do on a day-to-day basis. Maybe an evidence summary is already out there about the safety of having a bag of fluids in the prep area to use for flushing catheters – if there isn’t, why not write one?
Veterinary nurses have authored four of our top five Altmetric scoring papers (a score based on the volume and source of attention a paper has received, including social media mentions, as well as citations), including the first place paper with an Altmetric score of 22, which has been read more than 5,000 times: “Are pressure vests beneficial at reducing stress in anxious and fearful dogs?” Also, our most read paper of all time was written by a VN. It has amassed 30,000 views and has an Altmetric score of 18: “Are dogs that are fed from a raised bowl at an increased risk of gastric dilation volvulus compared with floor-fed dogs?”
Many papers published in the journal are written by VNs, and VNs sit on the journal’s editorial board and peer review submitted papers. Further, the winners of our 2020 Veterinary Evidence Student Awards were SVNs (now RVNs) from Bristol, who assessed the impact of educational interventions on hand hygiene compliance.
Veterinary Evidence is dedicated to ensuring everyone has the opportunity to contribute, and ensures first-time and inexperienced authors are supported through the whole process. The journal understands putting pen to paper can be very daunting, with potential authors worrying about whether they have anything to say and whether they have the credentials to say it. In a recent survey of authors who’ve published in Veterinary Evidence:
So, you’re fired up with your burning question… how do you get started? For many, the beginning is refining a query into a structured question that can be answered as a Knowledge Summary.
The journal team – and RCVS Knowledge’s Library and Knowledge Services team – can support you, helping you to develop your question, assisting in your literature search and providing any further information during the submission process. Authors often find answering a question close to their hearts and getting published provides them with a different kind of job satisfaction, new skills and increased confidence in navigating the literature.
In summary, care is about the veterinary team; best care is about the team using all available evidence for the benefit of their patients; future best care is about identifying and filling our knowledge gaps.
Championing the use of evidence-based medicine to enhance the quality of veterinary care
