Annotated Bibliography #1:
Rujoiu, Octavian and Valentina Rujoiu. "Veterinarians' Views on Pet Loss: Evidence from Romania." Journal of Loss & Trauma, Vol. 20, no. 2, Mar/Apr 2015.
The article interviewed 20 veterinarians on their views about pet loss and how to cope with it both from a veterinarian and owner perspective. Nearly universally, veterinarians agree that performing euthanasias is the hardest part of their job; however, some claim that over the years, they have grown almost numb to the process and that it gets easier over time. Furthermore, many veterinarians refuse to not only euthanize, but also to simply treat, their own animals because the "feelings of empathy" are too strong for their own pets and make impact their decision making. Discussing euthanasia is also one of the hardest topics for vets to communicate to their human clients, and many advise the owners to see counselors, explaining, "a counselor is appropriate for the client’s emotional balance and can allow for an understanding of the situation."
I plan to use this article as part of my final capstone project for the section discussing doctor-pet owner communication. I also will take the advice of the article to heart while I am at my internship. I actually do not shadow the vets on appointments that I know will ultimately result in euthanasia as that is an intimate last moment between pet and owner, and they don't need some stranger observing it. The article is reliable as it was found on Galileo and previously had been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
Annotated Bibliography #2:
Claude, Andrew. "4 Keys to Communicate Clearly about Pain in Pets." Firstline, Mar/Apr2017 Supplement Pain Control, pp. 18-21. EBSCOhost,proxygsusfor.galileo.usg.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth& AN=122236089&site=eds-live&scope=site.
The article “4 Keys to Communicate Clearly about Pain in Pets”, discusses how veterinarians should approach prescribing pain medication to animals, focusing on how to communicate with and educate the owner about the pain medication. First of all, the veterinarian should “NEVER allow clients the choice of whether or not pain management should be used in their pets” (Claude 3), as they didn’t go to vet school and aren’t educated enough to make those decisions. Thus, it is the vet’s responsibility to prescribe pain medication for the well being of their animal clients. Also, the vet should, “Present a brief tutorial of the physiology of pain in dogs or cats and how it is similar to that in people” (4) to help the owner understand why the pain medication is needed and how it will affect their pet. The vet should also relate the surgery/illness that requires the pain medication to a human equivalent, to give the owner an idea of why the pain medication is needed and make the pain level personally relatable. It is important to include the owner in the process of prescribing an animal pain medication because not only does the owner have the right to be involved in their beloved pet’s life, but they also know the animal best and will be able to tell if their pet is in discomfort.The source is reliable because the author, Dr. Andrew Claude, was a practicing veterinarian for over a decade before becoming the assistant professor and service chief of veterinary anesthesiology at Mississippi State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. The article also came from a reliable source (Galileo) and is up to date on its information, as it was just published last year. I plan to use the article as part of my final capstone project to help answer the part of my essential question related to owner/veterinarian communication. In my internship, I will watch to see how the veterinarians prescribe pain medication and compare their communication to that of which the article recommended.
Annotated Bibliography #3:
Kogan LR, Oxley JA, Hellyer P and Schoenfeld-Tacher R (2017) United Kingdom Veterinarians’ Perceptions of Clients’ Internet Use and the Perceived Impact on the Client–Vet Relationship. Front. Vet. Sci. 4:180. doi: 10.3389/fvets.2017.00180
A study was conducted surveying 100 UK Veterinarians on how they felt the Internet impacted their practice and how it affected their patient/client communication. “More veterinarians reported feeling that clients’ use of the Internet for pet health information has had a negative impact on the vet–client relationship (54%) compared to those who felt it has had a positive impact (37%).” The veterinarians reported that although the Internet provided easy to access information, it was often unreliable or over-exaggerated. They would rather their clients come in and see them in person to get an accurate diagnosis than for the owners to self-treat their animals with tactics that are unlikely to work or are misdiagnosed. Furthermore, “no veterinarians felt that the Internet had reduced the amount of time they need to spend with clients.” While a wide breadth of information is available, it is often either hard to understand or is inaccurate, so the amount of time they spend explaining animals’ diagnoses to clients isn’t reduced in actuality. Lastly, very few veterinarians suggested any websites to their clients, with “28% stating less than once a month, 27% several times a month, 21% several times a week, 15% at least once a day, 3% many times a day, and 6% never” recommending websites to owners.
Thus, the UK veterinarians felt that the overall impact of the Internet on their practices has been a negative one. The information can be misleading, downright inaccurate, and hard to understand, and they rarely recommend reliable websites to their clients, preferring to explain animal care and treatment to their clients in person. The research and article was reliable as it was published on Galileo, a reliable resource, was approved by Colorado State University Research Integrity and Compliance Review committee, and was edited and reviewed by refutable people from Virginia Tech, University of California Davis, and Lincoln Memorial University. I plan to use the article in my final presentation for my Capstone in the section analyzing client-veterinarian relationships. It is applicable to my essential question as it discusses how veterinarians communicate with the pet owners, with research indicating that veterinarians prefer face-to-face communication over Internet communication and that they possess a general distrust of the Internet. In my internship, I have never seen any of the veterinarians recommend any websites, so my personal experience supports the findings in the article.