Assessing pet owners’ knowledge and comprehension of veterinary medical terminology
Assessing pet owners’ knowledge and comprehension of veterinary medical terminology
Open access
In our edition of: Jun 2025
In our categories of: practice management
our summary:
Piazza C., Dominguez Cots L. and Dye C. (2025) Assessing pet owners’ knowledge and comprehension of veterinary medical terminology. Veterinary Record, 196 (9), e5163.
The aim of this survey was to assess owners’ understanding of commonly used vocabulary within a UK first opinion and referral hospital. Secondary aims were to assess whether owners with English as their second language are disadvantaged and whether owners who feel communication as good have a better understanding of medical terms.
An anonymous questionnaire was distributed to clients attending a UK small animal first opinion and referral practice. During the 5-month study period owners were asked to complete the survey before or after their consultation without help from others or using the internet, there was also an option to complete the questionnaire online. The first section of the questionnaire covered owner demographics. The second section consisted of 30 multiple choice questions asking owners to select the most appropriate definition for frequently used medical terms. In the final section owners were asked to give their own interpretation of a selection of medical phrases that commonly occur in veterinary consultations. They were also asked to indicate whether they considered each phrase to represent good, or bad, news.
Following exclusions 373 questionnaires were available for analysis. When considering their understanding of information and advice given by first opinion veterinary surgeons 97% of respondents considered it to be good or moderate to good. For communications in a referral setting 92% of respondents considered their current understanding of information and advice given to them by their referral veterinarian to be good or moderate to good. In both settings the majority of respondents felt communication required no improvement.
Terms and phrases where common misconceptions were identified included ‘acute’, ‘laparotomy’ and ‘zoonosis’ where less than half the respondents gave correct answers. ‘Acute’ was understood to mean severe by 48% of respondents, and 40% believed that ‘seizure’ related to collapse as a result of cardiac arrythmia and lack of oxygen in addition to abnormal brain activity. Thirty-four percent thought that antibiotics could be used to treat viral and fungal diseases as well as bacterial infections.
Most respondents were able to correctly identify whether veterinary medical phrases represented good news or bad news as far as their pet’s health was concerned. However, a significant number did not know the meaning of the phrases ‘the disease is refractory to treatment’ (68%), ‘the prognosis is guarded’ (45%) and ‘the tumour is metastatic’ (38%). The phrase ‘the tumour is malignant’ was misinterpreted as being associated with good news by 8% of respondents.
Whilst 97% of respondents were able to identify that the phrase ‘the disease is in remission’ represented good news, only 33% went on to accurately describe its meaning using free text.
Limitations of the study are that the questions may have been misinterpreted by the respondents, possible response bias, and that there may have been non-compliance over the use of internet resources to complete the questions.
This study provides some evidence that whilst pet owners generally felt veterinary communication to be good some commonly used terms and phrases were frequently misinterpreted. Continued research into the benefits of different types of approaches to veterinary communication and their impact on owner understanding is needed.
The following may also be of interest
Janke, N. et al. (2021) Pet owners’ and veterinarians’ perceptions of information exchange and clinical decision-making in companion animal practice. PLoS ONE, 16 (2), e0245632. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245632
Coe, J.B., Adams, C.L. and Bonnett, B.N. (2008) A focus group study of veterinarians’ and pet owners’ perceptions of veterinarian-client communication in companion animal practice. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 233 (7), pp: 1072-1080. https://doi.org/10.2460/javma.233.7.1072
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