Can you help improve how research is communicated to veterinary surgeons?
By Nicola Clements Rolfe, PGCert(Research Methods), MA
PhD Student at Hartpury University
As veterinarians, you need to keep up with the latest developments emerging from research. However, vets are notoriously time-poor, making incorporating scientific advances into clinical decision-making challenging (Larson and White, 2015). Effective communication is vital for converting scientific research into practical solutions in the veterinary industry as part of evidence-based veterinary medicine. As it can ultimately impact the health and welfare of animals and their caregivers, the importance of communication in this arena cannot be overstated.
A systematic literature review in 2020 found that the existing body of research on veterinary communication has three major areas: (a) communication with clients, (b) cross-disciplinary communication across the professional veterinary team and (c) training of veterinary communication skills (Pun, 2020). Few papers exist on communication between research and practice or how vets access information.
A 2019 survey of vets and vet students in Georgia, USA, found that their information-seeking strategies varied according to career stage (Garner, Hartle and Creevy, 2019). The sources from which UK vets obtain their information, though, have not been surveyed since Nielson et al. in 2015. In the last few years, the information landscape has been changing rapidly. Investigating how vets currently search for knowledge and the ways in which they would like to acquire information will facilitate more targeted communication of science from research into practice.
To this end, I would like to request your participation in a short survey aimed at understanding how practising UK veterinary surgeons currently access scientific information. The survey – https://bit.ly/vetcomms – is designed to be brief and will only take approximately five minutes to complete. Your insight will be invaluable in helping me gather comprehensive data to improve communication channels and bridge any existing gaps between researchers and veterinary professionals.
You may have already engaged with me at the London Vet Show, or received an email if you are on the RCVS research contact list. If so, thank you for your help. I would be grateful if you would pass on the survey link to any colleagues, friends and family who are working UK vet surgeons that may be willing to take part.
Responses will be treated with the utmost confidentiality and will be used solely for research purposes. This project has received ethics approval from Hartpury University under reference ETHICS2022-120.
References
1. Garner, B.C., Hartle, D.Y. and Creevy, K.E. (2019) ‘The Educational Resource Preferences and Information-Seeking Behaviors of Veterinary Medical Students and Practitioners’, Journal of Veterinary Medical Education, 46(4), pp. 470–480. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3138/jvme.1017-150r1.
2. Larson, R.L. and White, B.J. (2015) ‘Importance of the role of the scientific literature in clinical decision making’, Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 247(1), pp. 58–64. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2460/javma.247.1.58.
3. Nielsen, T.D. et al. (2015) ‘Survey of the UK veterinary profession 2: sources of information used by veterinarians’, The Veterinary Record, 177(7), p. 172. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1136/vr.103068.
4. Pun, J.K.H. (2020) ‘An integrated review of the role of communication in veterinary clinical practice’, BMC Veterinary Research, 16(1), pp. 1–14. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12917-020-02558-2.