Book excerpt: Ideal for veterinary students, residents and clinicians, the fourth edition of this bestselling textbook has been fully updated in line with developments in research and teaching. The logical chapter progression reflects the stages in a clinical case work-up and how epidemiological concepts and methods contribute. This new edition provides guidelines for improving patient and population health outcomes, and detecting emerging diseases through systematic evaluation of patient encounters and electronic medical records incorporates new methodologies and concepts drawn from the recent veterinary practice literature updates chapter content including expanded coverage of risk, statistical and economic analyses, and surveillance for emerging diseases more than 60 examples of clinical research drawn from the international veterinary practice literature presented as structured abstracts; follow-up questions invite the reader to participate in the analysis of results online links to full text versions of more than half of structured abstracts and more than 40% of the book’s 174 literature citations updates the listing and review of public and private online resources, including guidelines for online literature searching and critical evaluation of clinical reports. Today’s veterinary curricula places greater emphasis on experiential/problem-based learning versus discipline-oriented instruction. This fourth edition is ideally suited to introduce epidemiologic concepts and methodologies to veterinary students in the context of the patient encounter, and should be of use at any point in the veterinary curriculum.