Vétoquinol has released the results of a survey of 1000 dog owners, which looked into their attitudes towards long-term medication for their pet1.
Owners were asked to rate how important various factors were to them when it came to giving medicine long term to their dog. They were also asked to consider what they felt was most important to their vet when it came to choosing a medicine.
Vétoquinol says the fact that dog owners rate the effectiveness of a medication much more highly than the cost means there is very little reason to compromise on treatment based on a presumption of what clients will want to pay. These findings are also largely very positive in that they suggest that dog owners believe that in many areas vets are making decisions based on criteria that are important to owners. The area where there is the greatest mismatch is over the risk of side effects of medication.
Pet owners think that vets may take the risk of side effects from long-term medications less seriously than the owners themselves might prefer. It suggests that the risk of potential harm, no matter how small the risk of actual harm is, may be more unacceptable to the dog owner than vets and nurses might otherwise presume. When prescribing long-term medication there is a need to talk about the risks associated with medication more openly and to take the client's attitudes to risk into consideration.
1. A survey of 1048 dog owners, carried out by petbuzz, on behalf of Vétoquinol, March 2011
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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...