Veterinarian barriers to knowledge translation (KT) within the context of swine infectious disease research: an international survey of swine veterinarians

Abstract

Background: Food animal veterinarians face commodity specific and urgent global challenges yet conditions preventing use of best available knowledge have been sparsely studied. The American Association of Swine Veterinarians (AASV) membership (N = 1289) was surveyed online to benchmark their information priorities and their motivations and sources for keeping current with infectious disease research, and to describe their reported time, skill, access, and process as barriers to knowledge translation (KT).

Results: Respondents (n = 80) were mostly from Canada (n = 40) and the U.S.A (n = 31) and demographics approximated the AASV's. Colleagues are the first choice for information on difficult cases (49%, 95%CI: 38-61). Half of respondents (53%, 95%CI: 41-64) spend an hour or less per week keeping up with infectious disease research. The majority reported moderate or less than moderate efficiency (62%, 95%CI: 51-72), and moderate or greater stress (59%, 95%CI: 48-70) with their process for keeping up. Journal article methods sections are commonly not read, almost a third (32%, 95% CI: 22-43) reported either they do not evaluate statistical methods or that they had poor confidence to do so, and half (52, 95%CI: 41-63) could not explain 'confounding bias'. Approximately half (55%, 95%CI: 41-69) with direct oversight of swine herds had full access to 2 or fewer academic journals. Approximately a third of respondents (34%, 95%CI: 24-46) selected only formats involving single research studies (either full text or summaries) as preferred reading materials for keeping current over expert summaries of the body of evidence.

Conclusion: KT barriers are considerable and a source of stress for many swine veterinarians. Sub-optimal efficiency with keeping up and low confidence to appraise aspects of research are concerns. Results are consistent with previous literature and illustrate need for improved KT infrastructure and for additional training in statistical methods and interpretation of primary research. Further evaluation is warranted of why approximately a third of veterinarians in this study, for the purpose of keeping up, preferentially choose to review individual research studies over choices that would include an expert summary of the body of evidence. Consideration of reasons for this preference will be important in the planning of KT infrastructure improvements.

Keywords: Evidence based medicine; Information sources; Knowledge translation; Questionnaire; Research synthesis; Survey; Swine infectious disease; Veterinarian.

Fig. 1

(Q12) Self-reported confidence to evaluate a research paper for the appropriateness of the study design used, the statistical methods used, and the author’s statistical interpretation of results, by role (direct vs. indirect) (Data supporting this figure are shown in Table 5 in Additional file 3)

Fig. 2

(Q4) Frequency (%) of rankings of first, second, and third choices for getting information for difficult clinical cases by role (direct vs indirect) (data supporting this figure are shown in Table 7 in Additional file 3)

Fig. 3

(Q11) Overall reported frequency (%) of reading of sections of journal articles (n = 79) (data supporting this figure are shown in Table 8 in Additional file 3)

Fig. 4

(Q18) Comparison of frequencies (%) of respondents reporting all of four defining KT barriers between those who selected for keeping current full text individual primary research papers (IPRP) versus those who did not. Defining KT barriers include 1) an hour or less available per week to keeping up, 2) low confidence to assess statistical methods used in a study, 3) inability to explain confounding bias, and 4) does not usually read methods section) (data supporting this figure are shown in Table 11A in Additional file 3)