Vetnews | Desember 2024 12 « BACK TO CONTENTS sporting organisations working together in a unified manner are required to enhance policy decisions. Furthermore, collectively working to understand the confidentiality issues which surround the reporting of concerning situations to governing bodies also appears necessary. It is hoped that understanding and acknowledging these pressures will enable governing bodies to consider ways to further support veterinary surgeons. 4.1 | Limitations As this was the first research study to investigate ethical problems experienced by ESMVS, a questionnaire was developed to access a wide range of data. Although this technique did not provide in-depth information about an individual veterinary surgeon’s experiences, it did provide evidence of the range of issues and concerns facing this group. The aim was descriptive rather than definitive and has provided a foundation from which further research can be directed towards the issues highlighted in this study. Veterinary surgeons who had concerns about ethical issues in sports medicine may have been more motivated to respond to the questionnaire. There is also the potential for response bias, whereby respondents may have provided answers they perceived were ethically desirable. Regarding the performance of the questionnaire, closed questions were answered by a higher number of respondents than the open-ended questions and many of the open-ended questions were answered in the same way by individual respondents. The questionnaire was completed by 97 respondents which provides a good overview of ethical concerns. It is not clear what number of veterinary surgeons work specifically within the equine sports medicine discipline in the UK, but the membership of BEVA is approaching 3000. Further research using a qualitative method would complement this survey by gathering in-depth information on the issues identified. Both are essential to inform ethical analysis and reasoning about the ethics of equine sports veterinary medicine. 5 | CONCLUSION This empirical research, which is the first to investigate ethical problems experienced by ESMVS, identified an array of contemporary concerns that are wide-ranging and demand further study. The research has revealed areas that could pose reputational risk to equestrian sport and/or the veterinary profession. Governing bodies should consider how to improve support for veterinary surgeons facing ethical dilemmas, as for some these challenges lead to moral distress and may impact recruitment and retention within the profession. FUNDING INFORMATION: Kate Allen obtained funding from a Bristol University Research Fellowship to undertake this study. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We thank David Mountford, Lucy Grieve, David Rendle, Colin Roberts, Alison Talbot and Sarah Smith from the British Equine Veterinary Association for their support and guidance with the questionnaire development and distribution. We also thank Janet Douglas from World Horse Welfare for their guidance with questionnaire development and manuscript review. We are grateful to all respondents for their time to contribute to this survey and for sharing valuable insights and information. AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS: Kate Allen: Conceptualization; methodology; software; data curation; formal analysis; funding acquisition; writing – original draft; writing – review and editing. Mike King: Supervision; writing – review and editing; methodology. Lynley Anderson: Supervision; writing – review and editing; methodology. Siobhan Mullan: Methodology; supervision; writing – review and editing. DATA INTEGRITY STATEMENT: Kate Allen had full access to all the data in the study and took responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of data analysis. ETHICAL ANIMAL RESEARCH: This research study involves human participants only. Project approval was awarded by the University of Bristol Faculty of Health Sciences Research Ethics Committee (identification number 7563). INFORMED CONSENT: Participants consented to take part by the completion of the questionnaire. PEER REVIEW: The peer review history for this article is available at https:/www.webofscience.com/api/gateway/wos/peer-review/10.1111/ evj.14204. DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT: The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request: Open sharing exemption was granted by the editor due to a lack of provision in the informed consent process. REFERENCES 1. Allen K, Anderson L, King M, Mullen S. 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