New discussion guides to support contextualised care for veterinary professionals and pet owners

We have produced a series of contextualised care discussion guides designed to aid clear communication between veterinary professionals and clients.

Veterinary teams are encouraged to share the guides with their clients, and work through the content together. This helps ensure that both parties are well informed of owner values, pet welfare and behaviour, and diagnosis and treatment options. A member of the veterinary team and the client can then work together to make decisions and provide quality care.

Sharon, a cat and dog owner from South East England who took part in the development of the guides, said: “I always get so worked up with vet consultations that I forget half of what they say, or feel like I didn’t tell them enough about my pet’s history. If the vet used these guides at my next consult, they would make me feel very at ease indeed!”

Pam Mosedale, Clinical Lead at RCVS Knowledge, said: “These guides offer a simple, actionable way to help deliver contextualised care in practice. To get started, run through the questions in the guide with a client, and see how this can help you devise a treatment plan with the information you’ve discovered. This helps you gain a fuller understanding of your patient’s care and wellbeing needs and your client’s circumstances and expectations. Ultimately, this will assist you in delivering quality care that aligns with the needs and expectations of your clients.”

There are three contextualised care discussion guides in total, which are:

• Pre-consultation conversation guide for owners: This guide is designed to help pet owners prepare for a veterinary consultation and help the veterinary team identify any support areas they may need. It will help owners communicate what is most important to them and their pet.
• Your pet’s wellbeing during treatment: This guide will help pet owners and the veterinary team identify how pets may react to certain treatments, and it will guide overall decisions on treatment plans.
• Conversation guide for delivering contextualised care: This guide, to be used when the patient has a diagnosis, can be used to discuss treatment options with the owner, allowing for an in-depth discussion on what treatment will entail, and how this might impact both the owner and the patient.

Veterinary teams and clients are encouraged to use and adapt these resources to aid communication and information gathering to support the delivery of effective contextualised care.

Contextualised care is a way of delivering veterinary care that acknowledges that there are different ways to approach the diagnosis and treatment of an animal, depending on the circumstances of the individual animal and their caregivers, and the context in which the care is delivered. This requires a partnership between caregivers/owners, and the veterinary team, all working together for the best quality of life for the patient.

These free conversation guides and other resources can be found on the RCVS Knowledge contextualised care hub: https://rcvsknowledge.org/contextualisedcare