About

About this site

What is evidence-based veterinary medicine (EBVM)?

EBVM can be defined as the making of decisions which combine clinical expertise with the most relevant and best available scientific evidence whilst taking into account each patient and owners’ individual circumstances (RCVS Knowledge, 2024). Ultimately as veterinarians, we wish to do the best for our patients and support them to have as long and happy lives as possible. Having the best quality evidence as the basis for all of our decisions would be ideal, but as in human medicine, it may not exist. A search for the best available evidence or conducting your own research into the evidence are the alternatives.

What are the obstacles to practising EBVM?

Time

Access to literature

Difficulty in analysing articles

Finding evidence

There are many options for accessing information, and trying to find the “best” can be difficult. Many veterinarians start with the Veterinary Information Network (VIN) or Google and then hone their search from there. There is the danger here, however, of delving too far into lower quality evidence sources such as individual case reports and expert opinion.

The best evidence comes from evidence-based practice guidelines or consensus statements and systematic reviews. Critically appraised topics on specific questions fir into level 1 (see Figure 1). Textbooks, conference proceedings and pharmaceutical company literature generally fit into level 5.

Figure 1: Evidence pyramid where 1 is the highest level and 5 is the lowest. Image credit: here

The Evidence-Based Veterinary Medicine Association (EBVMA) is a professional organisation founded to better organize the emerging research, training and practice of evidence-based medicine.

What this site offers

This site is a collection of freely available evidence level one articles from across the web that will hopefully give guidance to veterinarians in their day-to-day practice. It includes consensus statements, clinical guidelines, critically appraised topics and some systematic reviews. Anything that is not open access is not included. The site will be regularly updated with new information. Additionally, if that new information supersedes previous statements, the latter will be removed.

Links are provided to all the articles so that they may be read in full. There are also buttons for downloading each article (if available). Information is organised by body system or subdiscipline, as opposed to by the issuing organisation.

New articles will be added monthly. The site is a work in progress.

The most cited organisations include:

the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine – Consensus statements
the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons – Knowledge – Veterinary Evidence Clinical Queries
the University of Nottingham: Centre for Evidence-Based Veterinary Medicine – BestBETs for Vets
the American Animal Hospital Association – Clinical guidelines
Feline Veterinary Medicine Association (formerly AAFP) and International Cat Care (formerly ISFM) – Consensus guidelines

All doses of all drugs should be double-checked.

What this site is not

Exhaustive
All the answers
Necessarily the best evidence for your situation
Responsible for the treatment choices you make for your patient and client

What is coming in the future

Articles available for other species (horses, ruminants, exotics etc.)
Articles available in other languages

Website manager

This site is managed by Dr Jim Connah BVSc MVetSci MANZCVS (Small Animal Medicine). I am a small and large animal veterinarian located in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia and I have been in practice for over 30 years. I have a passion for evidence-based veterinary medicine and continued education. I am not, however, an expert in either field.

This site was created as a resource for busy veterinarians who may have a specific question that needs answering. There is so much good quality evidence out there, but many people do not know where to find it. Hopefully this will make things easier.