Review by Kathy Lyon (Click on stars for an explanation)

You may purchase this book on Amazon.com.

How often do you ponder the quality of research that goes into a paper on your topic of interest? How thoroughly do you investigate the writer and the references? In order to provide the best possible care for the animals being treated, it is important to know and to be able to trust the answers to questions about diagnostic options and treatments. Clinical research using appropriate methodologies is necessary in order to make informed decisions.

This book addresses the value of research emanating from clinical practice -- from non-academic or referral veterinary clinics. These clinics are presented with the most appropriate populations with which to answer questions, and so it is logical that this is where to start clinical research.

This book is a course to tap the vast potential of veterinary practitioners to conduct clinical research and to instruct the veterinary practitioner on the current standards of evidence-based veterinary medicine.

Anyone who is even vaguely interested in pursuing a study on a particular topic needs to read this book. The steps from the initial question to the development and ethics of a study, to the observation, statistics, testing methods, sample size, comparison of populations, control studies, and trials (just for starters) are covered here.

Writing up a case or a research proposal is difficult, so this topic is well addressed. There is enough information in this book to encourage the most timid writer to launch a study for publication.

This is not a book that will be of wide interest to most veterinarians in practice, but it would be a good book to have in the event that one wishes to fulfill that goal of publication, or of just being a participant in finding answers. The information here is accessible and an important aid to increasing quantity and quality of research within veterinary practice. The book will help you take those intellectually rewarding steps toward improving outcomes through informed decisions and will show you how to maximize the power of studies when there are small numbers of patients and few obvious resources.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Establishing the Hypothesis
3. Sampling, Subject Selection Criteria and Recruitment
4. Variables
5. Introducing Statistics: Preparing to Make a Sample Size Estimation
6. How Many Animals/Patients Are Needed? Estimating the Sample Size
7. Observational Studies: Cohort Studies
8. Cross-Sectional and Case-Control Studies
9. Clinical Randomized Controlled Trials
10. Studies on Diagnostic Tests
11. Designing Questionnaires
12. Study Implementation
13. Data Management
14. Writing a Research Protocol and Applying for Funding
15. Writing and Reviewing Scientific Papers
16. Ethical and Legal Considerations
17. Systematic Reviews, Meta-Analysis, Critically Appraised Topics, Decision Analysis, Case Series and Case Reports
18. Index

Wiley-Blackwell (2008).

Paperback, 236 pages.

ISBN: 978-1-4051-4551-0.