Evidence-based veterinary medicine: searching the evidence in practice

Abstract

Evidence-based veterinary medicine techniques can be of enormous value to the general practitioner. There are some key processes to apply in order to search and find the science behind questions that arise relevant to cases, or to support standard operating procedures, and this article guides the novice through the basics. Entering text into internet databases can require keywords and phrases that can be built by asking a structured clinical question, including patient population, intervention, comparison and outcome. Useful databases available to the public are compared and basic appraisal of the resulting article hits is considered. A documented summary can be written and reviewed by peers before sharing the results with a wider professional community. If the outcomes can be linked to measurable results from the use of this summary, some tangible value can be evaluated from its creation.