AVA Conference Adelaide 2016

The change in roles for most farm animal clinicians from treating individual sick animals to working at a herd / flock preventive level has been obvious and widely recognised. Farm animal clinicians may also have roles as educators, facilitators, counsellors, advocates, researchers or even enforcers. These potential complex roles generate a) ethical questions: whose interests are clinicians working towards? b) practical questions : how do we better communicate to achieve these goals? and c) financial questions : How can veterinary practices derive income from these new roles ? Given the information explosion, it seems impossible for vets to retain the reputation as the single authoritative source of animal health and welfare knowledge, perhaps clients primarily need support in synthesising and reviewing existing knowledge. Recent work has also highlighted the potential for valuing innovation and research undertaken by groups of farmers. In this context vets could have a role in supporting the production of practice-based evidence rather than simply disseminating evidence-based medicine