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RE: [RC] Preventing treatment - Bob MorrisVery good points Terre. But you are starting to sound like me when it comes to data. It would be only as good as what is reported. Considering the complaints from the past, about it being to much of a burden on the Vets and ride Managers, how would you propose to obtain the data in a worthwhile way? There is one other point to be made here. While I do deplore any horse fatality there remains the fact we are working with very small numbers. One must look at the return on investment in this case. Is it practical to embrace a large scale effort for minimal returns? We are all aware that no matter the effort there will always be fatalities at endurance rides. Not caused by any untoward practices but just because living bodies die eventually. Education is much cheaper in the long term and a much better venue for what we want to accomplish. No matter the cautions, mandatory or suggested, the factor of death is always eminent. That is the allure of competitive sport. Beating the odds; ephemeral, actual or whatever. Now, having the correct and proper data to reinforce arguments in defense of the sport's practice is another story. Some hypothetical posits; AERC Sanctions about 760,000 miles of endurance competition. We have about 20,000 competitive entries to the rides making up these miles. We have about 85% completion rate and of those not completing 2% are metabolic reasons. Say we experience six fatalities of which two can be attributed to poor riding practices. Two riders means one one hundredth of one percent of all entries in a year. I believe a strong education effort would provide a greater return on investment than any rule, data acquisition or other preventative method as it would benefit all levels of rider. In addition it would be proactive rather than reactive. Bob Bob Morris Morris Endurance Enterprises Boise, ID -----Original Message----- From: ridecamp-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ridecamp-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of terre Sent: Saturday, February 15, 2003 2:23 PM To: ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Cc: staggandcheryl@xxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [RC] Preventing treatment We have been nibbling around the edges of this subject for ages (with discussions of pull codes, and the Aussie letter to the WEG); kudos to Stagg for finally bringing it to the point where we can attempt to sink our teeth into it! I work in human health care, specifically transfusion medicine (blood bank). Hospitals put a great deal of effort into investigating what they call "Adverse Events"--a serious adverse event can be anything from amputating the wrong limb to death; less serious errors include things like mislabelled specimens, wrong dosages, etc. In almost every case where there is a serious adverse event (in our case it would be an equine death), investigation reveals that there were dozens of "near misses" that were never reported. Usually this is due to reluctance to admit an error or get a colleague in trouble when "nothing really happened"; occasionally it's due to apathy or a lack of appreciation of how serious the consequences could have been. Had these 'near misses' been reported (and procedures changed to eliminate them), the adverse event could have been avoided. This is what we need--more data, or as Jeannie says "better science". We do not have enough deaths (Thank God) to provide us with the needed insight as to "what goes wrong"--we need to analyse the "near misses" if we are going to see a clear pattern of what the factors are that put horses at risk. This is why it is so important that the pull codes be accurately reported. We need reports of treatments, including followup. We need input from the owner/riders as to their management procedures--feed, travel time and conditions, electrolyting protocols, equine 'disposition', previous histories, etc. It would perhaps be even MORE valuable if we could gather reports on people who experienced problems and successfully dealt with them--stayed longer in the hold, fed something di fferent, changed tack, whatever; because these people may have completed that data will be difficult to gather. There is little value in changing rules or procedures without clear evidence that the changes will help. Because lowering the pulse requirement from 78 to 64 helped it doesn't necessarily follow that lowering it to 56 will help even more. Nor does requiring 'qualification'--it may not be newbies that are crashing the bulk of the horses. We need: a)to establish a protocol for accurately reporting all treatments, all deaths, and ideally even horses that were experiencing problems but successfully completed after a change in handling. This would involve drafting a form aimed at collecting as much data as possible, and not just the obvious questions of what happened during the ride. b)to establish a committee (not necessarily the AERC vet committee) to review and analyse the data c)a means for this committee to follow up with the riders if necessary, or at a given time post-'event'--say two months--to see how the horse fared long term d)a report back to AERC (at least the BOD and Vet committee) within a given time frame (say 2 years) with specific recommendations. A gargantuan task! Perhaps, but it is time we 'put our money where our mouth is' and invested some serious effort in this project. There are members (myself included) who have (or can get) some "draft procedures" from other venues (such as Health Care or industry) on how to get started. But we (AERC) need to put the ball in play. Terre (#2548) =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- =-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- =-=-=-=-= =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. 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