The first-ever guide to rational decision making in veterinary clinics and hospitals
Veterinary medicine entails crucial decisions about patient care and practice on a daily basis. Whether to admit patients displaying particular symptoms, whether to pursue diagnoses or prioritize therapeutic trials, whether to normalize overnight stays after routine surgery; the answers to questions like these can significantly shape patient outcomes and standards of care. However, clinicians are seldom trained to analyze their patterns of decision-making rationally, relying instead on the existing culture of a practice to dictate their responses. This can lead to irrational decision-making, institutional inertia, resistance to evidence-based changes, and a general decline in clinical effectiveness.
Decision Making in Veterinary Practice provides the first-ever dedicated guide to rational principles for decision-making in small animal care. Rooted in the study of normative ethics, it seeks to pose important questions and develop processes by which they can be answered, and those answers reviewed subsequently. The resulting book promises to transform the clinical performance of clinicians and practices that adopt it.
Decision Making in Veterinary Practice readers will also find:
- Discussions of key issues rooted in extensive clinical experience and observation
- Detailed discussion of important decision determinants like time of day, patient weight, criteria for determining trial success, and more
- Essential insights on clinical decision-making and clinical reasoning
Decision Making in Veterinary Practice is ideal for all veterinary practitioners and veterinary students.
Table of Contents:
Decision-Making in Veterinary Practice
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Section 1-Fundamental Concepts in Making Clinical Decisions
1-How to Determine Your Success as a Clinician
2-How to Obtain a Patient History
3-Informed Consent
4-Risks, Benefits, and Ageism
5-The Most Important Things an Owner Needs to Know
6-Euthanasia
7-Referrals
8-The Influence of Economics on Decision-Making
9-How to Optimize Patient Outcomes
10-Medical Errors
Section 2-Principles of Diagnosis
11-The Influence of Patient Weight on Decision-Making
12-The Influence of Age and Aging on Decision-Making
13-The Day of the Week Matters
14-The Time-of-Day Matters
15-Serial Monitoring of Laboratory Results
16-Overdiagnosis and Useful Diagnosis
17-The Minimum Database
18-In What Order Should Tests be Performed?
19- Diagnostic Errors
20-Providing a Prognosis
Section 3-Principles of Treatment
21-Inpatient or Outpatient?
22-The Therapeutic Trial
23-Interpreting Therapeutic Outcomes
24-Setting Goals and Therapeutic Endpoints
25-Pain Management
About the Author :
Barry Kipperman, DVM, is an Instructor in Veterinary Ethics at the University of California at Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine, Davis, CA, USA. He previously founded a small animal specialist and emergency hospital in the San Francisco Bay Area and spent 33 years in veterinary practice before transitioning to teaching and writing. His publications on veterinary ethics and standards of practice have appeared in the DVM Newsmagazine, Journal of the American Veterinary Association, Veterinary Record, and many others.
