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of veterinary surgeons willing to complete daily record sheets of all procedures undertaken and all injuries (however minor) sustained for a significant amount of time and this might be difficult to establish and maintain. It was not possible to conduct any nonresponder bias
analysis during this study as all responses were anonymous such that we had no method of identifying and following up individuals who had not yet responded to the survey.
Conclusion
Being an equine veterinary surgeon is clearly not without risk. This study has confirmed that there are high injury rates and that serious and potentially fatal injuries are not uncommon. The current work suggests that over a 30-year working life an equine vet can expect to sustain between seven and eight injuries. The severity of these injuries will clearly be very variable and indeed most equine veterinary surgeons may never sustain an injury that results in hospitalisation or a loss of consciousness. However, there were sufficient reports of very serious injury providing food for thought for the profession as a whole and in particular employers of those at risk. There is a need to establish safer systems of work, and intensive education of the profession and other animal handlers. This survey was completed by practising equine veterinary surgeons who can be regarded as a ‘survivor’ population in that others (not available for survey) will have left equine practice as a result of previous injuries. As such, the estimates of risk in this study may well be underestimates of the true level of risk. Particular emphasis is required in the training of veterinary students and newly qualified equine veterinary surgeons to ensure they are aware of the risks associated with equine practice and methods they should employ to avoid injury and remain safe while working with horses.
Authors’ declaration of interests The authors declare they have no competing interests.
Ethical animal research
Ethical approval was granted from the University of Glasgow, College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences Ethics Committee (Application number 200120061; 4th June 2013). All data were anonymised prior to analysis.
Sources of funding
British Equine Veterinary Association and the Veterinary Defence Society.
Acknowledgements The authors would like to acknowledge Mairi Gaffney and Robert Fisher for their support in this project.
Authorship
T. Parkin, J. Brown and E. MacDonald designed the study. J. Brown and T. Parkin undertook the statistical analyses. All authors contributed and commented to the manuscript and read and approved the final version.
Manufacturers' addresses
1SmartSurvey Ltd., Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, UK. 2Provalis Software, Montreal, Canada.
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Supporting information
Additional Supporting Information may be found in the online version of this article at the publisher’s website:
Supplementary Item 1: Questionnaire survey of equine veterinary practitioners.
© 2018 EVJ Ltd
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