Decision-Making in Veterinary Practice

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.

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.

Veterinary Clinical Decision-Making
Barry Kipperman
Acknowledgments

Introduction

Section I-Fundamental Concepts in Making Clinical Decisions

1-How to Determine Your Success as a Clinician
2-Giving Your Patient the Best Opportunity to Succeed-Plan B
3-How to Obtain a Patient History-Wise Coach
4-Informed Consent-Writing down for client
5-Risk Management and Ageism
6-Referrals
7-The Impact of Patient Weight on Decision-Making
8-The Impact of Economics on Decision-Making
9-The Most Important Things an Owner Needs to Know
IC, costs, appetite, Template for discharge instructions

Section II-Diagnosis

10-Why is a Day Really a Week? (1 day in dog/cat life=1 week for us)…must act quickly-Dog aging project
11-The Day of the Week Matters
12-The Time-of-Day Matters
13-A Diagnosis at Any Cost?
Rationales for intervention
Alter prognosis or therapy
14-The Minimum Data Base
15-In What Order Should Tests be Performed?
16-To Biopsy or Not?
17-Interpreting Test Results
Cognitive Biases
18-Providing a Prognosis

Section III-Treatment

19-Inpatient vs. Outpatient
Hosp overnight
20-The Therapeutic Trial
21-What Factors Should Impact the Order of Anesthetic Procedures?
22-When Surgery is Not a Chance to Cure
23-Pain Management
24-Advanced Care: Beneficial or Futile?

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The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.