"We need to better understand what constitutes good-quality contextualised care, and the barriers and enablers to its delivery in practice" - Sally Everitt, RCVS Knowledge.

The initiative will bring together professionals from across the sector.

Veterinary charity RCVS Knowledge has announced an initiative to develop a ‘roadmap’ for delivering contextualised care.

The initiative, launching today (4 Feb) at the National Forum for Contextualised Care, seeks to understand the barriers and enablers to delivering contextualised care in companion animal practices, and establish when it looks like when done well.

The event will being together professionals from across the sector, including association leaders, educators, students, practice staff, veterinary charities, regulators and representatives from corporate and independent practices, and animal owners.

After the event, RCVS Knowledge will work with an independent research partner to conduct focus groups, surveys and interviews to collect a representative range of views from across the sector and pet owners. The work will culminate in a summit that will use the research findings to co-design recommendations on:

 • How veterinary professionals’ and pet owners’ perspectives and circumstances can be better brought together in reaching decisions about the most appropriate care for the individual animal.
 • The barriers and enablers to implementing contextualised care in practice.  
 • What needs to be done, and by whom, to support veterinary teams to deliver contextualised care and shared decision-making as part of good-quality veterinary care.

Sally Everitt, clinical lead of evidence at RCVS Knowledge, said: “Contextualised care is the 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.

“The term has been used increasingly over the past year, and is now the subject of much debate, alongside other aligned terms such as ‘spectrum of care’ and ‘pragmatic medicine’. However, we need to better understand what constitutes good-quality contextualised care, and the barriers and enablers to its delivery in practice.”

Katie Mantell, chief executive of RCVS Knowledge, said: “As an independent charity with a mission to advance the quality of veterinary care, we believe RCVS Knowledge is well-placed to bring together all parts of the veterinary community to seek consensus on what good-quality contextualised care looks like and how it can be delivered in practice.

“Our aim is to take a collaborative, robust approach to co-producing a roadmap for contextualised care that will support its widespread delivery for the benefit of animals, the veterinary professions and animal owners.”

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