Evidence-Based Veterinary Medicine Association

Balancing Doctor Expertise and Client Autonomy

Posted 15 February 2010 - 1:41pm by Brennen McKenzie

I was recently put in mind of an interesting and challenging puzzle in the philosophy of medical practice; the question of the tension between the role of health care providers as experts and the autonomy of patients of veterinary clients. I subsequently ran across an articulate and cogent discussion of this problem from the Annals of Internal Medicine,

Hill's Criteria of Causation

Posted 25 January 2010 - 6:00pm by Brennen McKenzie

Mark Crislip at Science-Based Medicine recently discussed Hill's Criteria of Causation, but after looking at Dr. Hill's original paper I felt obliged to examine the subject here as well because it is central to science-based medicine, and key in differentiating real medicine from quackery.

EBVMA 2010: June 14 - 15, Pomona, CA

Posted 17 December 2009 - 8:18am by KateAnderson

Mark your calendars for June 14 and 15 for the 4th Symposium on Evidence-based Veterinary Medicine. EBVMA 2010 will be held at Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona. We look forward to seeing you in California!

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Introduction: Dr. Brennen McKenzie

Posted 14 December 2009 - 1:34pm by Brennen McKenzie

Very slick and exciting new website! Well done!

For those to whom I haven't already introduced myself, my name is Brennen McKenzie, and I'm a small animal veterinarian in private practice. I am also currently Chair of the Practitioner Committee here at the EBVMA. We are working on a couple of exciting projects, including taking a survey of practitioners regarding their awareness and attitudes about EBVM and populating the practitioner's area of this website with useful tools and information for implementing EBVM in day-to-day clinical practice.

Time to REFLECT

Posted 11 December 2009 - 1:15pm by KateAnderson

REFLECT, Reporting guidElines For randomized controLled trials for livEstoCk and food safeTy, is an evidence-based minimum set of items for trials reporting production, health, and food-safety outcomes.

Like the CONSORT Statement, REFLECT aims to improve the reporting—and, by extension—the design and interpretation—of clinical trials.

In January 2010, the REFLECT Statement will be published in Journal of Food Protection, Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine, Zoonoses and Public Health, Preventive Veterinary Medicine, and Journal of Swine Health and Production. These publications will enable authors to cite the Statement in the journal most associated with their area.

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New EBVMA site designed for collaboration

Posted 16 November 2009 - 3:34pm by Stuart Turner

The EBVMA is rolling out a much needed redesign of its online presence. This site is currently in βeta, which means we will be evaluating and testing new features, functions, open standards compliance, usability and design over the coming months. We are especially excited by the opportunity to offer the community the ability to contribute and share content such as member profiles, featured stories regarding the research, education and practice of EBM, discussion forums, research tools, content syndication and more. The EBVMA is an inherently small organization with limited resources so our approach is to develop the site in an agile, iterative and transparent way over time.

The redesign is based on a powerful and widely used open source content publishing platform. This same platform is used by an impressive array of academic, government, and business organizations such as The Onion, Fast Company, NASA, Fox Searchlight, Harvard's Science and Engineering group, Greenpeace UK, Amnesty International, Novell, Popular Science, FedEx, Flock, Oxfam International, and the new whitehouse.gov.

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Inaugural "What Is the Evidence?" article introduces recurring EBM series to JAVMA

Posted 9 November 2009 - 10:56am by Stuart Turner

The 1 November 2009 edition of the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (JAVMA) features the first article in a new "Where Is The Evidence?" series to be published approximately every 1-2 months.

Sandi Lefebvre, Assistant Editor of both JAVMA and the American Journal of Veterinary Research (AJVR), states they have received manuscripts covering a wide variety of topics and they are especially interested in submission of articles relating to "food animals".

Member Profile: Dr. Bob Larson

Posted 17 October 2009 - 12:04am by RobertLarson

After graduating from veterinary college and finishing a PhD program I became actively engaged in private practice emphasizing work with beef cattle. Many of my clients posed questions that sent me searching for answers. Most of the questions seemed innocent enough, such as “why do we do it that way?”, “how much will that help?”, “that seems expensive, how much benefit will that provide?” and other similarly valid demands on my expertise.

At about this time I vented some of my frustrations with finding answers to such seemingly simple and appropriate questions to a colleague (Dr. Lisa Tokach), and she advised me to subscribe to a newsletter from the Washington State University Field Disease Investigation Unit edited by Dale Hancock and Susan Holler. Each issue of the newsletter spoke directly to questions I was encountering in daily practice and it renewed my interest in clinical epidemiology and critical thinking that had been lying dormant for some time. Other mentors such as Drs. Louis Perino and Steve Henry emerged that continued to challenge me to dig deeper into the literature and available evidence to find the best answers for my clients.