Achieving health gain through clinical guidelines II: Ensuring guidelines change medical practice.

Can audit improve antibiotic prescribing in general dental practice?

“…18 It has been shown that guidelines alone are seldom of value 19 but are more effective when linked with educational initiatives. 20 The effectiveness of innovation techniques in persuading practitioners to accept guidelines has shown that opinion leaders (100%) and audit with feedback (42%) are more effective than formal continuing education. 21 This investigation showed that this innovative audit, using guidelines and an educational component with feedback, was effective in reducing inappropriate antimicrobial use by changing GDPs' prescribing practices.…”

An exploratory, pragmatic, cluster randomised trial of practice nurse training in the use of asthma action plans

“…Our data also indicated that consenting asthma patients were different from non-consenters in terms of age, sex, deprivation and medication use, suggesting that the use of routine anonymous data is useful at least to check the applicability and generalisability of designed data sets. 40 Finally, training is only one way to change behaviour, and it is not always a successful method in routine health service practice. Other approaches, such as external review of electronic patient records coupled with specific feedback on individual patients who are poorly controlled, 41 may be a more focused, and thus more acceptable, method of improving asthma management in primary care.…”

The views and attitudes of general practitioners and smokers toward provision of smoking cessation advice: a qualitative study

“…Recognition that GPs and smokers are more likely to adhere to smoking cessation guidelines if they concur with the advice given, [15] should encourage the integration of attitudes and perceptions into their recommendations [16]. This study aimed to identify areas of common ground between GP and patient attitudes to inform the development of acceptable guidelines, thus maximising the chance that recommendations will be received positively and implemented.…”