Quality of equine veterinary care: Where can it go wrong? A conceptual framework for the quality of equine healthcare,based on court cases against equine practitioners in The Netherlands

Quality control and client satisfaction are topics of considerable current interest in both human and veterinary healthcare. Crucial to this discussion is a proper definition of ‘quality of care’. This study applied, to (equine) veterinary care, a conceptual framework designed for assessing the quality of human healthcare and featuring structural deficiency, procedural inadequacy and disappointing outcome as key elements. This was done using court cases against equine practitioners as a yardstick for client dissatisfaction. Applying a system for evaluating the quality of healthcare may be a good way of monitoring and improving (equine) veterinary services, particularly once reliable indices for client satisfaction have been validated.     

What can we learn from visual and objective assessment of non-lame and lame horses in straight lines,on the lunge and ridden?

Traditionally and when using objective gait analysis, horses with and without lameness are most frequently assessed trotting in straight lines in hand. Valuable information can be gained from assessment on the lunge and ridden in walk, trot and canter. No studies have quantified lameness during all aforementioned conditions and gaits at once, despite the rapid recent development in equine gait analysis methods. Objective methodologies, previously confined to gait laboratories, are currently being expanded to field technologies using accelerometers and inertial measurement units (IMUs). This publication aims to describe normal gait and the spectrum of pain-related gait abnormalities and other musculoskeletal adaptations to pain that can be observed in walk, trot and canter during in hand and ridden assessment in straight lines and on a circle on hard and soft surfaces. In addition, it aims to describe briefly how IMUs have been used and areas for further research in the light of what we know from subjective lameness examinations and what is possible with IMUs.     

How to Evaluate and Quantify the Influence of Coincidence on Fertility and Herd Health Parameters? A Practical Overview of Frequently Used and Abused Statistical Techniques in Research and Practice

In this article, frequently encountered statistical questions and methods used both in research and in daily practice are described and explained. First, the concepts of variability and uncertainty are explained and illustrated. From this, it is explained how variation can be quantified and how the limits of what can be expected as a result of normal variation are determined both for continuous and binary data. Based on the basic concepts of probability theory, an introduction to risk assessment was given. Finally it is explained how to test whether individual observations lie outside the normal range or the test whether populations are different from each other. All these are carried out avoiding theory and formulas as much as possible and illustrated with real examples from reproduction and herd health.