Article
Guidance-related support tools: a five years survey
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Published: | July 10, 2012 |
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Outline
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Background: great efforts have been made in recent years to improve dissemination and implementation of practice guidelines. However, no review has been completed on existing guidance-related support tools.
Objectives: (i) to make inventory of existing support tools among guidelines produced by our governmental organisation, (ii) to help guideline development teams to develop support tools, (iii) to improve access to tools
Methods: firstly, we identified all guidelines produced by our organisation from 2006 to 2011. Then, we carried out a manual search in each guideline (guideline appendix, evidence report or related website) in order to identify tools/documents that could help dissemination, understanding or implementation
Results: from 2006 to July 2011, 64 guidelines were produced. At least one tool was identified in 54% of them. More than ten types of different tools were identified; mostly (i) audit supports (15/35), (ii) templates (10/35), (iii) decision algorithms (9/35) and patient summaries (5/35). Other tools were identified as quality indicators, check lists, protocols, practical advices, slides, summary for GPs or other health professionals, etc.
Discussion: a wide range of tools are already available, intended to facilitate dissemination, understanding or implementation of guidelines. These tools were made together with and on request of professionals and patients participating in the guideline development. Other tools have been developed by external organisations. We wish to collect all these experiences through our website. We also plan to ask professionals about their needs of support tools
Implications for guideline developers/users: to identify and bring together all tools related to one guideline