2015 Volume 24 Issue 1 Pages 35-38
It is unclear to what degree pet owners visiting animal hospitals understand medical terms which are used in veterinary practice. In this paper, clients of three animal hospitals were asked to fill out a questionnaire. One hundred and ten pet owners living with 73 dogs, 32 cats and/or 9 miscellaneous pets participated in this survey. We made a list of 25 veterinary clinical terms which covers such popular words as diabetes and side effect to such unfamiliar words as zoonosis or remission. First, participants were asked whether or not they had ever heard of each term. If they were aware of them, their degree of understanding of each word was checked. The rate of correct understanding was 2.0-99.0%, and the rate of misunderstanding was 0.0-32.4%. These results suggested that veterinary staff should be careful in using technical terms. For example, knowledge of the terms ‘side effect’ or ‘anemia’ is very common, but pet owners often misunderstand the correct meaning. For another example, pet owners need additional explanation of ‘zoonosis’ or ‘lameness’, because such words are frequently used in veterinary field, but seldom in human medicine.
