integrative practice
The
Integrative Umbrella
More clients are asking for CAVM, but how do we respond when we don’t have ideal scientific evidence to back up these therapies? Here are the tools to weather this dichotomy. by Richard E. Palmquist, DVM, Past President AHVMA, Co-Director AHVMA Foundation
Veterinary medicine is a massive endeavor. Veterinarians are collectively responsible for all knowledge that could be used to maintain or rebuild health, or to relieve suffering and improve quality of life for the animals placed in our care. Since the knowledge and data used to treat our patients and perform our duties as veterinarians is incomplete, we are often asked to address situations that are, to say the least, unique. As professional students at Colorado State University, we were taught that the material we learned would be outdated quickly and that we must learn to find and assess data if we intended to be the best clinicians possible. No truer words were ever spoken. The Best Approach Complementary and alternative veterinary medicine (CAVM) relates to tools that are rapidly expanding in their use in our profession. Since many veterinarians are not trained in these techniques, they find it hard to understand how they might be useful, and since research in CAVM is not funded in amounts proportional to other realms of veterinary medicine, it is not surprising that
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integrative veterinary care
there is some confusion about how to best approach this subject. Groups like the AHVMA Foundation are working to improve these deficiencies. On a broad, national basis, the AVMA guiding policy on CAVM states: “The AVMA believes that all veterinary medicine, including CAVM, should be held to the same standards. Claims for safety and effectiveness ultimately should be proven by the scientific method. Circumstances commonly require that veterinarians extrapolate information when formulating a course of therapy. Veterinarians should exercise caution in such circumstances. Practices and philosophies that are ineffective or unsafe should be discarded” (AVMA Guidelines 2007). Veterinarians from the heights of professional academia to the trenches of clinical practice are generally in agreement with this sentiment. In a 2011 survey, deans of veterinary schools agreed that “CAVM is an important topic that should be addressed in veterinary medical education, but opinions varied as to the appropriate framework” (Memon, Sprunger).
