BACKGROUND Upper respiratory infections, acute sinus infections, and sore throats are common symptoms that cause patients to seek medical care. Despite well-established treatment guidelines, studies indicate that antibiotics are prescribed far more frequently than appropriate, raising a multitude of clinical issues. METHODS The primary goal of this study was to increase guideline adherence ra...

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to measure adherence rates to guideline-recommended process measures in patients with head and neck cancer. METHODS A total of 5720 patients who underwent surgery for head and neck cancer in Ontario between 1993 and 2010 were identified from administrative databases. Adherence to 4 guideline-recommended processes of care was measured and stratified by ...

Background Guideline adherence remains a challenge in clinical practice, despite guidelines' ascribed potential to improve patient outcomes. We studied the level of adherence to recommendations from Dutch national cancer treatment guidelines, and the influence of general and cancer-specific guideline characteristics on adherence. Methods Based on data from a national cancer registry, adherenc...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Few studies have evaluated sepsis guideline adherence in a tertiary pediatric emergency department setting. We sought to evaluate (1) adherence to 2006 Pediatric Advanced Life Support guidelines for severe sepsis and septic shock (SS), (2) barriers to adherence, and (3) hospital length of stay (LOS) contingent on guideline adherence. METHODS Prospective cohort study ...

INTRODUCTION Adherence to antimicrobial guidelines is key to ensuring a correct treatment of severe infections and to lessening misuse of broad-spectrum antimicrobials. We conducted a retrospective cross-sectional study at the Emergency Department of Aalborg University Hospital, North Denmark Region. Our aim was to examine adherence to local antimicrobial guidelines in the empirical treatment o...

Aims There are many reports of lack of guideline adherence in the treatment of patients with atrial fibrillation (AF), and AF affects health-related quality of life (HRQoL) negatively. The aim of this study was to investigate whether structured care compared to standard care of a general AF population could improve guideline adherence and HRQoL, and reduce symptoms,anxiety and depression. Met...

BACKGROUND As a strategy for improving clinical practice guideline (CPG) adherence, audit and feedback (A&F) has been found to be variably effective, yet A&F research has not investigated the impact of feedback characteristics on its effectiveness. This paper explores how high performing facilities (HPF) and low performing facilities (LPF) differ in the way they use clinical audit data for feed...

BACKGROUND Physicians' heavy workload is often thought to jeopardise the quality of care and to be a barrier to improving quality. The relationship between these has, however, rarely been investigated. In this study quality of care is defined as care 'in accordance with professional guidelines'. In this study we investigated whether GPs with a higher workload adhere less to guidelines than thos...

PURPOSE Despite their efficacy, some recommended therapies are underused. The purpose of this paper is to describe clinical decision support system (CDSS) development and its impact on clinical guideline adherence. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH A new CDSS was developed and introduced in a cardiac intensive care unit (CICU) in 2003, which provided physicians with patient-tailored reminders and p...

OBJECTIVE To study the adherence to local hospital guidelines for antimicrobial prophylaxis in surgery, and explore reasons for non-adherence. METHODS A prospective, multicentre audit of elective procedures, without prior suspicion of infection, was carried out in 13 Dutch hospitals. By reviewing medical, anaesthetic and nursing records, and medication charts, the prescription of antibiotics ...