Owners care about efficacy and side effects, but not cost

RE: Owners care about efficacy and side effects, but not cost

Anonymous — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 23:16:35 GMT

Nicki - Sorry to hear your story, and I certainly agree that vets should lay all the options out for you, and guide you to the best possible care; but we also need to do so without making those who can't afford the best care feel guilty - it's a tricky balance, but yes, the vet should give you all the options and help YOU to decide which works for you and YOUR family member.

Re: the study, I agree that sample size helps; but survey design is also important to its impact. For example, the question of cost could be phrased in several different ways:

1) "Is cost of a medication more important than whether it works?"

2) "Your dog needs medications for the rest of his life. Medication A has a 75% chance of curing your dog and costs £30/month. Medication B has a 95% chance of curing your dog but costs £300/month. Which would you choose?"

I'm giving an extreme example, but there are a lot of intermediates in there which will influence how people answer. And certainly, I've shown this to a number of vets and nurses now - no-one's seen this finding as accurate based on how their clientele act, which raises suspicions.

I want to see how the study was designed, but there are a lot of potential pitfalls to this sort of research so the detailed method and study design need to be read alongside the results.

RE: Owners care about efficacy and side effects, but not cost

Nicki Glen — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 10:06:35 GMT

Surveys are there to show the general consensus of opinion & thinking and as this one had over 1000 dog owners complete the survey the results are significant and impactful. As a dog owner and veterinary nurse I have had experience of a practice treating one of my dogs with the least expensive option. Whilst I appreciate their concerns about my bank account, I was not happy when I discovered I was not offered, and my dog wasn’t given the best treatment and supportive therapy regime available at the time. As a consequence it took alot longer for the dog to recover. I changed my practice because of this. The message to take from this survey is that they provide an insight to the current thinking. Only you, as the vet, with your client in front of them can assess through discussion the best way to provide a service which the owner is happy with and can afford.

RE: Owners care about efficacy and side effects, but not cost

Sean Dunne — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 16:18:52 GMT

Surveys like this are flawed because folks will mostly give the answer that makes them feel good about themselves.

RE: Owners care about efficacy and side effects, but not cost

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 14:55:07 GMT

Do you have the full survey and details of the sample population and techniques? I'd love to believe this, but I'm guessing that people are either talking about a hypothetical ideal world, or the sample population is simply not representative of the population at large. Or, the options were laid out such that they were ranking importance of various features of a medication (of course, efficacy is more important than cost to many - that doesn't mean that cost is irrelevant...) Or people lied!

I work across the country in a huge variety of economic zones and types of practice, and whilst people who care little about the costs of treatment are certainly met frequently, the vast majority are balancing efficacy against personal parameters such as ease of medication dosing and, yes, cost. I spend a lot of time offering "Gold", "Silver" and "Bronze" standard care plans as a result...