Equine influenza outbreaks in the UK: a practical approach to prevention

With outbreaks of equine influenza continuing to be reported in the UK, Richard Newton and Fleur Whitlock of the Animal Health Trust discusses practical steps that vets can promote and practise to reduce the risk of the virus spreading.

Working in partnership with our vets

This month, Lesley Prior from Tellenby Superfine Merino discusses how working with two veterinary teams helps keep her pioneering flock healthy and happy.

Making space for escape

Getting away from the daily grind is central to wellbeing, but is it possible to find a place to which to escape during the working day? At Willows Veterinary Centre and Referral Service, there has been a conscious effort to ensure the answer to that question is yes. Claire Read reports.

How to achieve more without doing more

Feeling as though each day is a roller coaster with barely enough time to catch your breath? Kirsty Sturman, training adviser at VDS Training, says there are simple ways you can feel more in control.

Celebrating veterinary leaders

Georgina Mills discusses how the RCVS is furthering its commitment to inspiring leadership in the profession.

Five ways to reinforce your mental wellbeing

The often demanding nature of veterinary practice can have a negative impact on mental health. Rosie Allister, helpline manager at Vetlife, offers five top tips that can help reinforce your wellbeing.

Building blocks of a mentally healthy workplace

As an employer, you have a legal duty of care to those you employ. But have you considered that that duty extends to supporting their mental health? Here Emma Mamo, head of workplace wellbeing at Mind, suggests some ways to go about building a mentally healthy working environment.

Who do you think you are?

Ever found yourself convinced you're a fraud, on the brink of being exposed as having fluked your way through your veterinary career? Imposter syndrome is far from a rare phenomenon but, as Penny Barker explains, there are ways to fight back.

Covid‐19: 10 lessons from young farm vets

The Covid-19 pandemic has been a challenging time for farm vets and their practices across the world, but how has the pandemic been seen by younger vets? Annie Kerr discusses

Ways to pass the stress test

Stress is a reasonable response to tricky situations, unexpected scenarios and a busy life - and so probably an inevitable part of life in the veterinary profession. Here Carolyne Crowe offers some top tips on how best to deal with it.

Arizona Veterinarians' Perceptions and Consensus Regarding Skills, Knowledge, and Attributes of Day One Veterinary Graduates

The purpose of this study was to assess Arizona veterinarians' perceptions and consensus regarding the importance of items in the domains of clinical skills, knowledge, and attributes of Day One graduates of veterinary school and to determine demographic predictors for items on which consensus was low. In this survey-based prospective study, respondents were asked to rate the importance of 44 items on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (not at all important) to 5 (extremely important). Responses were visualized as divergent stacked bar charts and evaluated via summary quantitative and qualitative analyses. Several items had a median score of 5. For clinical skills, items were the ability to formulate a preventive health care plan, the ability to interpret test results, and basic safe handling and restraint of animals; for knowledge, knowledge of pain management and anesthesia; and for attributes, teamwork, problem-solving skills, and client communication skills. The majority of items (80%) had a strong or very strong consensus measure, 18% had a moderate consensus measure, and 2% had a weak consensus measure. Six items (14%) varied by at least one demographic category. We found demographic differences between large and small animal practices in the clinical skill of ability to perform a necropsy, knowledge of large animal theriogenology, and knowledge of canine theriogenology. In conclusion, we found differences in the importance of items and agreement among practitioners, suggesting that critical evaluation of the mapped curriculum, particularly with regard to core curriculum compared with electives and clinical tracks, may benefit students and future employers.

Factors Contributing to the Decision to Euthanize: Diagnosis, Clinical Signs, and Triggers

This article reviews factors contributing to the decision to euthanize a patient by exploring the diagnosis, clinical signs, and triggers behind the choice. By investigating these triggers, the article helps guide practitioners to proactively manage areas of concern that lead to the decision of euthanasia. Included in this article is a benchmark comprehensive survey for pet families that standardizes documentation of family decision making surrounding end of life and euthanasia. Increased knowledge about diagnosis, clinical signs, and triggers may improve the technical and communication skills of professionals about specific conditions that are encountered at the end of life.

Tackling climate change by planting trees

The UK needs to step up its tree-planting efforts to make a dent on climate change. Here, Keith Powell suggests that vets could bring clients together to provide the money and land for such projects.

Animals, veterinarians and the sociology of diagnosis

While sociologists of medicine have focused their efforts on understanding human health, illness, and medicine, veterinary medical practice has not yet caught their attention in any sustained way. In this critical review article, we use insights from the sociology of diagnosis literature to explore veterinary practice, and aim to demonstrate the importance of animals to sociological understandings of health, illness and disease. As in human medicine, our analysis shows the importance of diagnosis in creating and maintaining the power and authority of the veterinary professional. However, we then explore how diagnosis operates as a kind of dance, where professional authority can be challenged, particularly in light of the complex ethical responsibilities and clinical interactions that result from the triad of professional/owner/animal patient. Finally, we consider diagnosis via the precept of entanglement, and raise the intriguing possibility of interspecies health relations, whereby decision-making in human health care may be influenced by experiences in animal health care and vice-versa. In our conclusion, we argue that this analysis provides opportunities to scholars researching diagnosis in human health care, particularly around the impact of commercial drivers; has implications for veterinary and public health practitioners; and should help animate the emerging sociology of veterinary medicine.

Development and validation of a Burden Transfer Inventory for predicting veterinarian stress related to client behavior

OBJECTIVE To develop and validate a Burden Transfer Inventory (BTI) of stressful client behaviors and to evaluate whether those behaviors are associated with client caregiver burden and contribute to veterinarian stress and burnout. DESIGN 3-stage cross-sectional psychometric validation study. SAMPLE 1,151 small animal veterinarians and 372 dog and cat owners. PROCEDURES During stage 1, a pool of 34 items representing stressful client behaviors was created through open-ended surveys of practicing veterinarians and 3 phases of pilot testing. During stage 2, 1,151 veterinarians recruited through the Veterinary Information Network completed a survey including those behavior items and validated measures of stress and burnout. Completed surveys were randomly assigned to either a measure development or validation database for factor and item analyses. Data were then combined to determine whether the BTI was correlated with measures of stress and burnout. During stage 3, owners of dogs and cats with a serious illness completed an online survey to assess how frequently they engaged in each BTI item as well as a validated measure of caregiver burden. RESULTS For dog and cat owners, there was a significant positive correlation between caregiver burden and the frequency that those owners reported engaging in BTI items. The frequency that veterinarians reported encountering BTI items was positively correlated with measures of stress and burnout, which suggested burden transfer from owners to veterinarians. The extent to which veterinarians reported being bothered by BTI items was a more robust predictor of stress and burnout than the frequency with which those items occurred. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE Results indicated the BTI can be used to understand how client behaviors associated with caregiver burden affect veterinarian stress and burnout. The BTI may be useful to identify specific stressors affecting individual veterinarians and how they react to those stressors.

Reporting cases of animal abuse

Georgina Mills discusses new research that looks at the factors affecting vets' decisions to report suspected cases of animal abuse.

Tools for Managing Feline Problem Behaviours: Owner understanding and involvement

PRACTICAL RELEVANCE

Good communication skills are at the heart of best practice for veterinarians and behaviourists (be they veterinarians/nurses/technicians with specialist behaviour training and qualifications or clinical animal behaviourists). Hence gaining an understanding of how to engage clients to become involved in their pets' treatment, both medical and behavioural, is relevant to all who work in this field.

CLINICAL CHALLENGES

Poor communication skills can be responsible for owners' lack of compliance regarding both medical treatment and implementation of behavioural protocols.

EVIDENCE BASE

Much of the evidence-based information on effective communication comes from the fields of human psychology and psychotherapy, human medicine and business, with only a limited amount coming from the veterinary field. Therefore, some opinions expressed in this article are based on the author's experience of treating cases in a cat-specific behaviour referral practice over the past 20 years and her work as a humanistic counsellor.

AUDIENCE

Any veterinarians, veterinary nurses or technicians who are involved in the diagnosis or treatment of problem feline behaviour in practice would benefit from knowledge of what promotes and also hinders owner understanding and involvement.