DANIEL COSTA

The state of education for evidence-based veterinary medicine in Portugal

Framed within the context of Portuguese higher education, this study focuses on the concept of Evidence-Based Veterinary Medicine (EBVM) in six Master Degrees in Veterinary Medicine, accredited by the Agency for Assessment and Accreditation of Higher Education (A3ES). The results of the EVIEDVET project indicate that: 1) Scientific literacy, as well as the social practices of science, do not constitute an explicit and central object of most curricular units; 2) the teaching-learning of EBVM is incipient and poorly structured, occurring sporadically and through individual initiatives by some teachers; 3) Attitudes towards emerging non-conventional therapies (with little or no scientific evidence to support them) range from indifference to openness, within a complementarity perspective; and 4) skills linked to EBVM are not widely recognized as important for clinical practice. Strategies are suggested to enhance the integration of EBVM into graduate curricula.