An integrated review of the role of communication in veterinary clinical practice

Abstract

Research of veterinary communication education is a relatively rare but important field, and its importance has been increasingly noticed recently. This study aims to describe the existing veterinary education research literature by adopting the systematic bibliometric approach. We conducted a comprehensive literature exploration on worldwide veterinary education and veterinary communication education publications in the Web of Science Core Collection database from 1 January 2000 to 31 December 2021. VOSviewer and EXCEL were used to identify trends and patterns in characteristics of the publications, including author affiliations and countries, and the publishing journals. Based on our search criteria, in the past 22 years, there have been 6006 veterinary education publications with 101 publications in 2000, 684 publications in 2021 (577% increase), and 677 communication-related publications with 9 publications in 2000, 107 publications in 2021 (1189% increase). The VOSviewer results indicate that both the United States and England were the most vigorous countries with close collaboration. Our results show the publication quantity has been increasing at a sharp slope rate over the past twenty years, which indicates the importance and growth of veterinary education and the veterinary communication education research field, and identifies the international collaborations among countries and institutions.

1. Introduction

Research of veterinary communication education is a relatively rare but important field. Veterinary communication is one of the most common barriers to veterinary care, yet there is only limited literature published in this field [1,2]. The earliest research on veterinary communication education was published in the early 1910s by Veranus Alva Moore, a bacteriologist, veterinary pathologist, professor, and Dean of the New York State Veterinary College at Cornell University, with the title of “American veterinary education and its problems” [3]. Professor Moore indicated that training clients, who own animals, was an important stone placed in the foundation for more efficient veterinary education, and effective veterinarian–client communication was key to training results.

Client–veterinarian communication has recently been found to be one of the most focusing themes [4]. The client–veterinary interaction is delineated in an initial greeting, history taking, performing physical examination, explaining diagnosis, offering treatment options, and closing the interaction. A study by the National Unit for the Advancement of Veterinary Communication Skills (NUVACS) showed that more than 80% of complaints brought against veterinarians revolve around problems of poor communication [5]. The problems associated with communication between veterinarians and animal owners and unforeseen random situations are the general causes of conflict, and conflict in the course of work is most often experienced by young veterinarians [6].

Research on and the teaching of communication as an essential clinical skill is a more recent development in veterinary medicine [5]. The importance of veterinary communication education has been increasingly noticed in these two decades [7]. For example, based on our search criteria with the keyword “veterinary education”, there were 6006 veterinary education publications (VEPs) in the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) database in the last 22 years, yet only 677 (11.27%) publications with the keyword “veterinary communication education” (veterinary communication education publications, VCEPs). Although there are rare publications in the communication field, it contains many essential and important research topics, such as veterinarians communicating with farmers about management and control disease [8,9,10,11], the decision making related to herd health [12], communicating with pet owners about canine behavior training [13], the perceptions of the monetary aspects of veterinary care [14], veterinarian–client communication [15,16], and work-related stress in the veterinary profession [6,17].

Bibliometric analysis is a scientific methodology that can be used for descriptive purposes, which combines descriptive statistical methods with information visualization technology to identify core research characteristics of a specific area and its evolving trends in the worldwide research literature, or for providing a basis for evaluation, such as evaluating research outputs, influences, or other factors [18,19,20]. Pritchard (1969) identified that “bibliometrics” is an alternative to “statistical bibliography”, and bibliometric analyses can provide an empirical view of a field through the investigation of information about the research publications [21]. In the past two decades, there have been few bibliometric publications in the veterinary field. The topics of those bibliometric publications include analysis of a specific veterinary journal [22,23,24,25], or analysis of specific research fields, such as parasitological [26], antimicrobial resistance in wildlife [27], interdisciplinary and collaborative publications [28], gut health [29], and canine leishmaniasis [30].

However, there were no related systematic literature pattern analysis about communication education in veterinary medicine in the past two decades. This study aims to (1) describe the existing veterinary education research literature by retrospectively identifying trends and patterns in characteristics of the publications, including author affiliations and countries and the publishing journals, by adopting the bibliometric review approach; and (2) investigate the characteristics of both veterinary education publications (VEPs) and the rare yet essential subsets in VEPs, veterinary communication education publications (VCEPs).

2. Materials and Methods

We conducted a comprehensive literature exploration in the WoSCC database at National Taiwan University, Taiwan. This database was chosen due to the journals within the database having been selected for inclusion based on high impacts in the respective fields. To understand the world research trends over the past 22 years, we collected all the related research published from 1 January 2000 to 31 December 2021. In the WoSCC database, “Topic” was one of the most common fields used for database searching and it searches for the entered term in Titles, Abstracts, Author keywords, and Keyword Plus fields of records in the WoSCC database. We used the following search strategy for identifying the related publication in the WoSCC. We searched for veterinary or veterinarian with any of the following terms: education, training, or learn by topic, and the time period was limited from 2000 to 2021. The searching strategy used was: (veterinary or veterinarian) (Topic) and (education, training, or learn) (Topic) in the Year 2000–2021. Additionally, the subset on communication was searched by adding the communication by topic in the same period of time.

Data searched from the WoSCC were downloaded for more detailed analysis, including the author names and their address, the years, titles, abstracts, citations, and research area of the publications, and the published journals related information, including impact factors and rankings. Summary statistics about the publications, such as the publication year, countries, and research areas were gathered through the WoSCC interface. The Microsoft Excel analysis tool was used to aggregate data downloaded from WoSCC and draw related figures, including the geographic-distribution world map.

Software was available for bibliometric analysis, such as VOSviewer (Leiden University’s Centre for Science and Technology Studies, Leiden, The Netherlands), which has recently been widely employed to conduct bibliometric research. The VOSviewer was used to visualize the analysis results on identifying the clusters of network maps on authorship and institution collaboration. VOSviewer is a publicly available tool. Researchers from Leiden University in the Netherlands, van Eck and Waltman, presented VOSviewer, a freely available computer program developed for constructing and viewing bibliometric maps in 2010 [31]. The VOSviewer Manual written by Nees Jan van Eck and Ludo Waltman at the University Leiden in 2022 [32] describes the software and applications in detail. VOSviewer is a software tool used for creating maps based on network data and for visualizing and exploring these maps. The functionality of VOSviewer can be summarized as follows: creating maps based on network data, visualizing and exploring maps. VOSviewer has been primarily intended for analyzing bibliometric networks, however, it can in fact be used to create, visualize, and explore maps based on any type of network data [32]. VOSviewer has been developed in the Java programming language and can run on most operating system platforms. VOSviewer can be downloaded from www.vosviewer.com (accessed on 1 January 2022) for free.

3. Results

4. Discussion

Our results provide a fresh perception of the global view of the progressive paths for veterinary education publications (VEPs) and veterinary communication education publications (VCEPs). Over the past twenty years, the number of both VEPs (n = 6006, mean = 273.0 publication/year) and VCEPs (n = 677, mean = 30.8 publication/year) research publications per year have continued to increase. We found that the increase in publications reveals several interesting points. Firstly, there are two turning points found in the publication trend in the VEPs. Before 2016, there were few related publications, i.e., less than 300 publications per year. Additionally, since 2020, there has been a substantial increase, especially in 2021, in the number of publications that was more than 600. Secondly, veterinary communication education publications (VCEPs) accounted for about 12% to 14% of veterinary education publications (VEPs) from 2000 to 2019, and reached the highest point (15%) in 2021. Thirdly, the growth rate of research publications in veterinary communication education (from 9 in 2000 to 107 publications in 2021, with an increasing rate of 1189%) in recent decades was greater than that of veterinary education (from 101 to 684 publications with 577%). Especially in 2005–2008, 2011–2013, 2016–2017, and 2018–2021, the growth rate of journal publications in veterinary communication education showed an upward trend. From all these results, we can realize more and more researchers in the field of veterinary education focus on the issue of communication education.

This outcome reveals a 677.2% growth in publications in the last 22 years and an even higher growth (901.8%) in institutions. In relation to the author-affiliated institutions that published the 6006 veterinary education publications (VEPs), we found that more and more institutions have been actively involved in this field in the last two decades. There were 101 publications by 111 institutions (1.10 institutions per publication) in 2000, and 684 publications by 1001 institutions (1.46 per publication) in 2021, with a 32.7% increase rate.

We found an interesting point that all the top 10 highly cited publications were published between 2001 to 2016 in veterinary education publications (n = 6006) and between 2002 to 2017 in veterinary communication education publications (n = 677), separately. We found another interesting result that determined that this publication outcome fits the Pareto principle [35], which states that 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes (the “vital few”). For the total number of publications for veterinary education, 130 journals (14.9%) published 80.4% of the publications. Additionally, the results even revealed an extreme case in the Pareto principle: the top 10 journals (1.1% of 872 journals) published 40.63% of the total publications. This phenomenon is also shown in the subset of veterinary communication education publications.

There is also an interesting point obtained from our results. When comparing the top ten top citations with the top ten journals, we found that the JAVMA (Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, listed as the second highest publishing Journal shown in Table 3) has three highly cited publications by Shaw et al. (2004), Coe et al. (2007), and Coe et al. (2008) [14,15,16]. All these three highly cited works are related to the communication and relationship between the owners of the company animals and the veterinarians, with a focus on medical expenses and trust relationships. There are two highly cited publications by Jansen et al. (2010) [8] and Ritter et al. (2017) [9], which are from the Journal of Dairy Science (which is ranked eighth in publication quantities as shown in Table 3) and one highly cited publication by Garforth et al. (2013) [10] from Preventive Veterinary Medicine related to the communication and relationship between the owners of the economic animals and the veterinarians with a focus on animal health status, the prevention of infectious diseases, and prevention and control, respectively. However, we also noticed that there are highly cited works published by the journals that are not in the top 10 publishing rank list. For example, there were 2 highly cited publications by Gardner et al. (2006) [17] and Kristensen and Jakobsen (2011) [12] from the New Zealand Veterinary Journal, listed as 22nd (publication number 38, 0.63%), that focusing on the better communication skills of veterinarians would decrease the workplace stress of veterinarians and help to solve the dairy farmers’ management-decision challenges, respectively. All these reveal the importance of the dilemmas encountered in both the workplaces and field with insights into the unmet needs.

There were some limitations to this study. We searched the WoSCC database due to its high-quality database and peer-reviewed quality research publications, which does not include popular sciences or newspapers. Furthermore, we only included research publications from 2000 to 2021, and the limited number of search terms was another potential limitation. There were also limitations concerning the analytic tool. Although the VOSviewer is a free software and well applied in bibliometric analysis, which can recognize the networks among countries, organizations, and authors, the country names were not shown as capitalized, and the selection bias of VOSviewer underestimated the academic influence of authors due to VOSviewer only recognizing the first author.

This study delivered key characteristic information of publications in VEPs and VCEPs over the last 21 years. In addition to the traditional bibliometric descriptive analysis, we are inspired by reviewers and suggest that future studies could consider expanding the horizons on traditional bibliometric research perspectives to include inferential statistics to explore the differences significances among groups.

5. Conclusions

In conclusion, we found that the publication quantity has been increasing at a sharp slope rate over the last twenty years, which indicates that both veterinary education research and veterinary communication research have been in growing stages, and will attract increased attention in the future. In the veterinary education field, the United States published the most literature, followed by the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and Germany. The Journal of Veterinary Medical Education accounts for the largest proportion of veterinary education publications, followed by the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (JAVMA), Veterinary Record, Animals, and Preventive Veterinary Medicine. Our bibliometric study provides unique information with respect to the high volume and variety of published data within the field of veterinary communication education, and it will be helpful for researchers who focus on this research field to acquire useful information about veterinary communication education. It also identifies collaborations among fields of research, researchers, and institutions useful in facilitating potential venues for future research and knowledge frontiers in the veterinary education research field.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, Z.-F.C. and Y.-H.E.H.; Data curation, Z.-F.C. and Y.-H.E.H.; Investigation, Z.-F.C.; Methodology, Z.-F.C., Y.-H.E.H., J.-J.L. and C.-H.C.; Project administration, Z.-F.C.; Resources, J.-J.L. and C.-H.C.; Supervision, Y.-H.E.H., J.-J.L. and C.-H.C.; Validation, Z.-F.C.; Visualization, Z.-F.C.; Writing—original draft, Z.-F.C.; Writing—review & editing, Y.-H.E.H., J.-J.L. and C.-H.C. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This research received no external funding.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Not applicable.

Data Availability Statement

Data sharing not applicable.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

References

1. Park, R.M.; Gruen, M.E.; Royal, K. Association between dog owner demographics and decision to seek veterinary care. Vet. Sci. 2021, 8, 7. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed]
2. Carr, A.N.M.; Kirkwood, R.N.; Petrovski, K.R. Using the five-microskills method in veterinary medicine clinical teaching. Vet. Sci. 2021, 8, 89. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed]
3. Moore, V.A. American veterinary education and its problems. Science 1911, 34, 457–464. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed][Green Version]
4. Pun, J.K. An integrated review of the role of communication in veterinary clinical practice. BMC Vet. Res. 2020, 16, 1–14. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
5. Gray, C.A.; Blaxter, A.C.; Johnston, P.A.; Latham, C.E.; May, S.; Phillips, C.A.; Turnbull, N.; Yamagishi, B. Communication education in veterinary education in the United Kingdom and Ireland: The NUVACS project coupled to progressive individual school endeavors. J. Vet. Med. Educ. 2006, 33, 85–92. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
6. Wojtacka, J.; Grudzień, W.; Wysok, B.; Szarek, J. Causes of stress and conflict in the veterinary professional workplace—A perspective from Poland. Ir. Vet. J. 2020, 73, 23. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
7. Shaw, J.R.; Barley, G.E.; Hill, A.E.; Larson, S.; Roter, D.L. Communication skills education onsite in a veterinary practice. Patient Educ. Couns. 2010, 80, 337–344. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
8. Jansen, J.; Steuten, C.D.M.; Renes, R.J.; Aarts, N.; Lam, T.J.G.M. Debunking the myth of the hard-to-reach farmer: Effective communication on udder health. J. Dairy Sci. 2010, 93, 1296–1306. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef][Green Version]
9. Ritter, C.; Jansen, J.; Roche, S.; Kelton, D.F.; Adams, C.L.; Orsel, K.; Erskine, R.J.; Benedictus, G.; Lam, T.J.G.M.; Barkema, H.W. Invited review: Determinants of farmers’ adoption of management-based strategies for infectious disease prevention and control. J. Dairy Sci. 2017, 100, 3329–3347. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef][Green Version]
10. Garforth, C.J.; Bailey, A.P.; Tranter, R.B. Farmers’ attitudes to disease risk management in England: A comparative analysis of sheep and pig farmers. Prev. Vet. Med. 2013, 110, 456–466. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
11. Scudamore, J.M.; Harris, D.M. Control of foot and mouth disease: Lessons from the experience of the outbreak in Great Britain in 2001. Rev.-Off. Int. Epizoot. 2002, 21, 699–710. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed]
12. Kristensen, E.; Jakobsen, E.B. Challenging the myth of the irrational dairy farmer; understanding decision-making related to herd health. N. Z. Vet. J. 2011, 59, 1–7. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed]
13. Tami, G.; Gallagher, A. Description of the behaviour of domestic dog (Canis familiaris) by experienced and inexperienced people. Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci. 2009, 120, 159–169. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
14. Coe, J.B.; Adams, C.L.; Bonnett, B.N. A focus group study of veterinarians’ and pet owners’ perceptions of the monetary aspects of veterinary care. J. Am. Vet. Med. Assoc. 2007, 231, 1510–1518. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
15. Shaw, J.R.; Adams, C.L.; Bonnett, B.N. What can veterinarians learn from studies of physician-patient communication about veterinarian-client-patient communication? J. Am. Vet. Med. Assoc. 2004, 224, 676–684. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef][Green Version]
16. Coe, J.B.; Adams, C.L.; Bonnett, B.N. A focus group study of veterinarians’ and pet owners’ perceptions of veterinarian-client communication in companion animal practice. J. Am. Vet. Med. Assoc. 2008, 233, 1072–1080. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
17. Gardner, D.H.; Hini, D. Work-related stress in the veterinary profession in New Zealand. N. Z. Vet. J. 2006, 54, 119–124. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
18. Ho, Y.S.; Mukul, S.A. Publication Performance and Trends in Mangrove Forests: A Bibliometric Analysis. Sustainability 2021, 13, 2532. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
19. Ho, Y.S.; Wang, M.H. A bibliometric analysis of artificial intelligence publications from 1991 to 2018. COLLNET J. Scientometr. Inform. Manag. 2021, 14, 369–392. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
20. Hsu, Y.H.E.; Yang, Y.T.; Wang, M.H.; Ho, Y.S. Bibliometric analysis of highly cited publications in health policy and services. COLLNET J. Scientometr. Inform. Manag. 2020, 14, 177–202. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
21. Pritchard, R.D. Equity theory: A review and critique. Organ. Behav. Hum. Perf. 1969, 4, 176–211. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
22. Crawley-Low, J. Bibliometric analysis of the American Journal of Veterinary Research to produce a list of core veterinary medicine journals. J. Med. Libr. Assoc. 2006, 94, 430. [Google Scholar]
23. Pelzer, N.L.; Wiese, W.H. Bibliometric study of grey literature in core veterinary medical journals. J. Med. Libr. Assoc. 2003, 91, 434. [Google Scholar] [PubMed]
24. Krauskopf, E.; Garcia, F.; Funk, R. Bibliometric analysis of multi-language veterinary journals. Transinformação 2017, 29, 343–353. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef][Green Version]
25. Schoenfeld-Tacher, R.M.; Alpi, K.M. A 45-year Retrospective Content Analysis of JVME Articles. J. Vet. Med. Educ. 2021, 48, 729–746. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
26. Rashidi, A.; Rahimi, B.; Delirrad, M. Bibliometric analysis of parasitological research in Iran and Turkey: A comparative study. Iran. J. Parasitol. 2013, 8, 313. [Google Scholar]
27. Torres, R.T.; Carvalho, J.; Cunha, M.V.; Serrano, E.; Palmeira, J.D.; Fonseca, C. Temporal and geographical research trends of antimicrobial resistance in wildlife-A bibliometric analysis. One Health 2020, 11, 100198. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
28. Page, J.R.; Moberly, H.K.; Youngen, G.K.; Hamel, B.J. Exploring the veterinary literature: A bibliometric methodology for identifying interdisciplinary and collaborative publications. Coll. Res. Libr. 2014, 75, 664–683. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef][Green Version]
29. Colombino, E.; Prieto-Botella, D.; Capucchio, M.T. Gut Health in Veterinary Medicine: A Bibliometric Analysis of the Literature. Animals 2021, 11, 1997. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
30. Olias-Molero, A.I.; Fontan-Matilla, E.; Cuquerella, M.; Alunda, J.M. Scientometric analysis of chemotherapy of canine leishmaniasis (2000–2020). Parasites Vectors 2021, 14, 1–8. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
31. Van Eck, N.J.; Waltman, L. Software survey: VOSviewer, a computer program for bibliometric mapping. Scientometrics 2010, 84, 523–538. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed][Green Version]
32. Van Eck, N.J.; Waltman, L. VOSviewer Manual. Manual for VOSviewer Version 1; Leiden University: Leiden, The Netherlands, 2022; Available online: https://www.vosviewer.com/documentation/Manual_VOSviewer_1.6.18.pdf (accessed on 1 January 2022).
33. Garfield, E. Introducing citation classics—Human side of scientific reports. Curr. Contents 1977, 1, 5–7. [Google Scholar]
34. Sikes, R.S. Animal Care and Use Committee of the American Society of Mammalogists. 2016 Guidelines of the American Society of Mammalogists for the use of wild mammals in research and education. J. Mammal. 2016, 97, 663–688. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed]
35. Pareto, V. Cours d’Économie Politique; Librairie Droz: Geneva, Switzerland, 1964; Volume 1. [Google Scholar]

Figure 1. Yearly numbers of veterinary education publications (VEPs), veterinary communication education publications (VCEPs), and the percentages of VCEPs/VEPs (2000 to 2021).

Figure 1. Yearly numbers of veterinary education publications (VEPs), veterinary communication education publications (VCEPs), and the percentages of VCEPs/VEPs (2000 to 2021).

Figure 2. Country collaboration analysis of 6006 veterinary education publications (VEPs) from 2000 to 2021.

Figure 2. Country collaboration analysis of 6006 veterinary education publications (VEPs) from 2000 to 2021.

Figure 3. Country collaboration analysis of 677 veterinary communication education publications (VCEPs) from 2000 to 2021.

Figure 3. Country collaboration analysis of 677 veterinary communication education publications (VCEPs) from 2000 to 2021.

Figure 4. Institutional collaboration analysis of 6006 veterinary education publications (VEPs) from 2000 to 2021.

Figure 4. Institutional collaboration analysis of 6006 veterinary education publications (VEPs) from 2000 to 2021.

Figure 5. Institutional collaboration analysis of 677 veterinary communication education publications (VCEPs) from 2000 to 2021.

Figure 5. Institutional collaboration analysis of 677 veterinary communication education publications (VCEPs) from 2000 to 2021.

Figure 6. Author collaboration analysis of 6006 veterinary education publications (VEPs) from 2000 to 2021.

Figure 6. Author collaboration analysis of 6006 veterinary education publications (VEPs) from 2000 to 2021.

Figure 7. Author collaboration analysis of 677 veterinary communication education publications (VCEPs) from 2000 to 2021.

Figure 7. Author collaboration analysis of 677 veterinary communication education publications (VCEPs) from 2000 to 2021.

Table 1. The top 10 highly cited publications in veterinary education (VEPs) from 2000 to 2021.

Table 1. The top 10 highly cited publications in veterinary education (VEPs) from 2000 to 2021.

Table 2. The top 10 highly cited publications in veterinary communication education (VCEPs) from 2000 to 2021.

Table 2. The top 10 highly cited publications in veterinary communication education (VCEPs) from 2000 to 2021.

Table 3. The top 10 productive journals for veterinary education publications (VEPs) from 2000 to 2021.

Table 3. The top 10 productive journals for veterinary education publications (VEPs) from 2000 to 2021.

Table 4. The top 10 productive journals for veterinary communication education publications (VCEPs) from 2000 to 2021.

Table 4. The top 10 productive journals for veterinary communication education publications (VCEPs) from 2000 to 2021.

Table 5. The top 10 productive countries for veterinary education publications (VEPs) and veterinary communication education publications (VCEPs) from 2000 to 2021.

Table 5. The top 10 productive countries for veterinary education publications (VEPs) and veterinary communication education publications (VCEPs) from 2000 to 2021.