11 Jun 2024
CVS has launched new guidance – primarily for its teams, but which can be picked up by others in the profession – about how contextualised care can be put into practice.
Paul Imrie
Job Title
Image: © pressmaster / Adobe Stock
Vets have been urged to seize the opportunities of “contextualised care” and not get caught “down the rabbit hole” of overcomplicating the approach.
As the sector continues to face scrutiny from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), engagements with owners over costs and treatment options have been brought front and centre.
Contextualised care is being driven by the BVA, other organisations, individual clinicians and veterinary practice groups to ensure appropriate and proportionate care is tailored to individual clients and their animals.
According to the BVA in its guidance, contextualised care should cover animal factors such as welfare, age, general health and temperament, client factors including lifestyle, ability to provide care and financial constraints, practice factors such as availability of skills and equipment, and human factors, which could include workplace culture and cognitive and emotional well-being.
But making the concept as simple as possible so it becomes engrained with veterinary team members at all stages of their career has been seen as key.
CVS has launched new guidance – primarily for its teams, but which can be picked up by others in the profession – about how contextualised care can be put into practice.
It is promoting a simple approach of “Ask, Listen, Acknowledge and Include”, essentially meaning clinicians ask animal owners what matters to them, listen to what matters, acknowledge it and include what matters in an animal’s care.
Paul Higgs, CVO at CVS, said it was important contextualised care was not seen as “medicine on a shoestring”, but that vets at all stages understood and practised it.
He said: “I think it’s important we clarify what contextualised care is.
“At BSAVA 2023, so pre-CMA, it was a term that was starting to be used. But I think that over the past 12 months, we have seen a lot of discussion around what contextualised care is. And I think a lot of our colleagues are now wondering if they really understand it, because of those conversations.
“To put contextualised care into context with an owner is really hard. There’s a risk that we run away with ourselves and get ourselves down the rabbit hole with overcomplicating something that is a really, truly simple concept.
“And it is simple. It is about finding out what truly matters and taking that into account. But making sure our owners know that we’ve taken it into account. That’s probably the biggest key element to it.”
CVS said its approach to guidance on the concept followed that common in human health care of asking “what matters to you”. It said its “What Matters to You” messaging would be communicated with the profession and clients through social media during June.
Mr Higgs said: “What you can do is you can rewrite a textbook for how you approach [something] with a limited budget, but that is not contextualised care, because the risk is if contextualised care becomes synonymous with medicine on a shoestring that we will not actually be fulfilling our animals’ needs.”
In May, the BVA unveiled six key recommendations it suggested vet professionals adopt to help address provisional concerns raised by the CMA, and one was to “normalise the principle of contextualised care in your practice culture”.
Sessions on contextualised care were held at BVA Live, Birmingham, last week. The BVA’s guidance is on its website.
