Implementing Clinical Practice Guidelines in General Practice: A Cluster Randomised Controlled Trial [ 2005 - 2007 ]

Research Grant

Researchers: Prof Sally Green (Principal investigator) ,  A/Pr Duncan Mortimer ,  A/Pr Neil Spike ,  A/Pr Peter Schattner ,  Dr Denise O'Connor
View all 7 related researchers

Brief description Evidence based clinical practice guidelines have the potential to improve clinical practice through providing health care workers with the most reliable information on which to base their treatment decisions. Many governments and organisations are investing significantly in the development of guidelines for common and important clinical disorders. To date, however, we do not fully understand how to increase the uptake of guidelines and facilitate health care workers to change their practice in line with the guideline's recommendations. This project aims to work with general practitioners to develop a method or strategy to increase the uptake of guidelines for the treatment of acute low back pain, particularly to reduce the number of patients who are unnecessarily x-rayed, and to increase advice to stay active. The effectiveness of the developed strategy will be tested by randomly assigning general practice clinics to either receive the intervention or to have access to the guidelines without any extra interventions (such as training and reminders) to help doctors change their practice. Both the doctor's practice, and patient outcomes of pain and disability will be measured to determine not only if the doctors followed the guidelines, but whether this resulted in an improvement in patient outcome. The findings of this study will help us understand the best ways to improve adhesion to guidelines and so has the potential to be applied to other conditions presenting to general practice where there are recommendations not currently being implemented into practice.

Funding Amount $AUD 426,000.00

Funding Scheme NHMRC Project Grants

Notes Standard Project Grant