14/08/2012Posted : August 14, 2012
Evidence-based vet resources get RCVS trust boost

The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) Charitable Trust is supporting an open symposium to discuss the potential for developing a range of evidence-based resources for the veterinary profession.
 
The event – The sceptical vet: Eminence or evidence? Finding the best way forward for the veterinary profession – will be held on October 30, 2012 at the RCVS building in London.
 
Delegates will represent both the human medical and veterinary fields, and are likely to include pioneers in the discipline, sceptics and people who wish to know more about evidence-based veterinary medicine (EVM), said the trust.
 
Trust director Cherry Bushell said: "The modern evidence-based medicine (EBM) approach has revolutionised patient care in human medicine and policy over the last four decades and has been thoroughly embraced by politicians and the wider public, even though animated debate about its usefulness is still occurring within the medical profession. It has been more challenging to set up a veterinary database similar to the Cochrane Collaboration [an evidence-based collaboration in human health], due to the particularities of veterinary medicine and the wide number of species involved.

"The RCVS Charitable Trust wishes to encourage the veterinary profession to continue to make progress towards this ambition."
 
This event is open to the whole veterinary profession and aims to provide a forum for debate where opinions on the clinical potential and the caveats of EVM can be voiced.
 
Covering lessons learned by the establishment of EBM principles in the human medicine field will be keynote speaker Khalid Khan, professor of women's health and clinical epidemiology, Bart's and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, while the veterinary keynote speaker, Brennen McKenzie, president of the Evidence-Based Veterinary Medicine Association, will encourage the setting of a forward-looking strategy to implement EVM practices across the profession.
 
Visit www.rcvstrust.org.uk/grants-and-collaborations for more information and to register a place.