A panicked owner calls: their dog just ate a bottle of ibuprofen, or collapsed from heatstroke, or is choking. What you tell them in that moment now has an evidence base.
The repeated thing across emergency calls
RECOVER just released the 2026 RECOVER First Aid Guidelines, evidence- and consensus-based guidelines for what to do in the prehospital period, the window between recognizing an emergency and reaching veterinary care. The guidelines address heatstroke, choking, burns, noncaustic toxin ingestion, hypoglycemia, and severe extremity bleeding. They include recognition algorithms and instructional figures veterinary teams can use when teaching first aid to pet owners, first responders, shelters, groomers, boarding facilities, and trainers.
The guidelines were developed using systematic literature searches, evidence synthesis, assessment of evidence quality, expert consensus, and an international commenting period. The process addressed 16 PICO questions and resulted in 50 treatment recommendations.
"Animal emergencies often begin before a patient reaches a veterinary hospital," says Jamie Burkitt, DVM, DACVECC, Guidelines co-chair of The RECOVER Initiative and Professor of Clinical Small Animal Emergency and Critical Care at the Weill School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California, Davis. "These guidelines give veterinary teams a rigorous, practical framework to help people recognize urgent problems, provide appropriate first aid, and get dogs and cats to veterinary care with the best chances for a good outcome."
What the pattern predicts
The recommendations are written for lay caregivers but designed to be translated by DVMs. The guidelines give veterinary teams a framework for what to tell clients to do before they arrive.
For the associate, you have evidence-based guidance for phone triage. For the owner-DVM, the algorithms and instructional figures can be integrated into client education. For the relief vet, you have a reference for emergency phone advice that's graded and systematic.
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The prehospital window finally has graded evidence.
Daniel J. Fletcher, PhD, DVM, DACVECC, president of The RECOVER Initiative, says the guidelines "extend that mission beyond the hospital by giving veterinary teams and animal caregivers evidence-informed guidance they can use when minutes matter, while keeping animals moving toward the veterinary care they need."
What would prove us wrong
The guidelines are available through the Wiley Online Library. If the recommendations turn out to be too complex for lay caregivers to execute under stress, or if practices don't adopt them, the gap between evidence and what actually gets said on emergency calls stays open. The thing to watch: whether the algorithms actually get used, or whether they sit in the library.
The thing to watch next
RECOVER developed these guidelines using systematic literature searches, evidence synthesis, assessment of evidence quality, expert consensus, and an international commenting period, the same rigorous process the organization used for its other guidelines. If the model works for first aid, the question is what gets the treatment next.