Advancing veterinary science: Exploring clinical research in private practice

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On this week's episode of The Vet Blast Podcast, Adam Christman, DVM, MBA, sits down with Glenna Mauldin, DVM, MS, Diplomate ACVIM (Oncology and Nutrition), director of clinical research at Thrive Pet Healthcare, to discuss what it is like to do clinical research in private practices.

Mauldin and Christman explore different kinds of clinical research that are commonly performed, some of the main challenges behind vendor-sponsored research, what veterinary professionals should consider before they launch a clinical research project, and more.

Below is a partial transcript. Listen to the full podcast for more.

Glenna Mauldin, DVM, MS, Diplomate ACVIM (Oncology and Nutrition): The second big category of research that is ongoing, is probably what I'm going to call vendor-sponsored research. And what I mean by that when I say vendor sponsored to me a vendor is somebody like Merck, Zoetis, Boehringer [Ingelheim], who has a new treatment, a new technology, and new drug that they're looking to test, and make sure that it does what they think it's going to do [and] what they want it to do, so that they can then introduce it into the marketplace to help the animal population and their families at large. But they need to have access to methods to test those new technologies and treatments.

So a big part of what we do as well is to assist these entities in advancing the science and getting these new treatments to the animals that need them. So I think probably that those are the 2 most important categories. Actually let me back up, I wouldn't say most important, I would say the ones that we currently are expending the most effort and the most time on 1 thing that we are going to talk about as we go through this discussion here a little bit later in the podcast [is] I am going to talk a bit about veterinarians who may want to do or are interested in doing their own clinical research, which is obviously a little bit different than what you would be doing when your project is being sort of guided by a vendor/sponsor who has a particular goal in mind with their research.