Introduction/ Background:
Nutrition is a fundamental element of life, with a role in maintenance, growth, reproduction, health and disease of all humans and animals. Nutrition has been identified as the fifth vital assessment within veterinary medicine, along with temperature, pulse, respiration and pain. Recent veterinary guidelines promote nutritional assessment as part of every dog’s or cat’s visit to a veterinarian. Previous research found veterinarians commonly use a simple what-prefaced question to initiate diet history taking, which was oriented to by veterinarians and clients as a closed-ended question. Communication best practices recommend open-ended questions, which encourage clients to expand their answers.

Objective:
The objective of the current study was to examine the effectiveness of three different nutrition-related history questions on obtaining diet-related information.

Methods:
A trained research assistant approached consented pet owners at four small-animal veterinary practices, prior to the owners’ interaction with the attending veterinarian, and was video recorded posing one of three nutrition-focused questions to participants (i.e., “Tell me…”; “What kind of food...”; “What kind of foods…”).

Findings:
A total of 99 video recordings were included. The “Tell me...” question was found to elicit a significantly higher total number of nutrition-related items (i.e., combined number of main-diet, treat, human-food, and medication and supplement items) compared to the "What kind of food..." question (p < 0.0001) or the "What kind of foods..." question (p < 0.0001).

Discussion:
Findings reinforce the value of telling questions (i.e., open-ended) to gather nutritional information.  These invite client expansions in comparison to specifying questions (i.e., closed-ended) that request specific, concise pieces of information. 



Authors:
*Coe, Jason B1, O’Connor, Rachel1, MacMartin, Clare2, Verbrugghe, Adronie3, Janke, Kristen1 
1. Department of Population Medicine, Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada;
2. Department of Clinical Studies, Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph , Guelph, Canada; 
3. Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition, College of Social & Applied Human Sciences, University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada.