The University of Nottingham

Academics at The University of Nottingham have launched two free internet resources for vets.

Scientists from the Centre for Evidence-based Veterinary Medicine (CEVM) at the School of Veterinary Medicine and Science have launched BestBETS for Vets (www.bestbetsforvets.org) and VetSRev(www.nottingham.ac.uk/cevm/vetsrev).

BestBETs for Vets has been adapted from an evidence-based medicine resource for emergency doctors (www.bestbets.org). BET stands for Best Evidence Topic and provides a summary of the evidence found relating to a specific clinical question posed by those in the veterinary profession.

The questions found on the site have all come from vets in general practice and the CEVM team has then undertaken a structured literature search to find the answers. A BET is structured in a very simple format and it is possible to just read the bottom line (where people can find the answer to the question), or the whole BET which includes the search terms used and the appraisal of the papers found. It is possible to sign up at www.bestbetsforvets.org to receive regular updates about new BETs published and also post questions for future BETs.

Dr Rachel Dean, the Director for the Centre for Evidence-based Veterinary Medicine said: “There is no other database of this kind in veterinary medicine, despite many that have been created for human medicine. There are also very few practitioner orientated evidence summaries for practising vets to help them incorporate evidence in clinical decision making. These new resources should help to facilitate the use of best evidence in practice.”

The other resource created by the team is called VetSRev, which is a freely accessible online database of citations for systematic reviews of relevance to veterinary medicine and science (www.nottingham.ac.uk/cevm/vetsrev).

Systematic reviews of good quality are considered the strongest evidence for clinical decision making in the profession and VetSRev lists over 300 references. The CEVM team developed this resource to establish what had already been done and provide one place of reference for researchers or clinicians looking for veterinary systematic reviews.