Contextualised care is a way of delivering veterinary care that is adapted to the needs and circumstances of the individual animal, its owner and the wider context.
It is a partnership between animal owners, caregivers and veterinary professionals, working together for the best quality of life for the patient. Contextualised care builds on evidence-based veterinary practice, which combines clinical expertise with the most relevant and best available scientific evidence, patient circumstances, and caregiver/owner circumstances.
Contextualised care acknowledges that different treatment pathways can offer equally acceptable patient journeys in different contexts. It can be seen as a way of providing morally and economically sustainable veterinary practice, regardless of circumstances.
It represents a move away from the concept of ‘gold standard care’, which can be unhelpfully prescriptive and inappropriate in certain situations.
How to support the delivery of contextualised care
In 2025, RCVS Knowledge conducted research with more than 1,000 pet owners and people working across the veterinary sector to find out how contextualised care is understood and experienced, what the barriers and facilitators to applying contextualised care in practice were, and what could be done to support its delivery.
The research found that while there is broad support from pet owners and veterinary professionals for a contextualised approach to delivering veterinary care, there are barriers preventing it from being applied consistently.
Based on the findings from this research, we have developed a roadmap which sets out what needs to happen to support contextualised care now and in the future.
