Context Despite wide promulgation, clinical practice guidelines have had limited
effect on changing physician behavior. Little is known about the process and
factors involved in changing physician practices in response to guidelines.
Objective To review barriers to physician adherence to clinical practice guidelines.
Data Sources We searched the MEDLINE, Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC),
and HealthSTAR databases (January 1966 to January 1998); bibliographies; textbooks
on health behavior or public health; and references supplied by experts to
find English-language article titles that describe barriers to guideline adherence.
Study Selection Of 5658 articles initially identified, we selected 76 published studies
describing at least 1 barrier to adherence to clinical practice guidelines,
practice parameters, clinical policies, or national consensus statements.
One investigator screened titles to identify candidate articles, then 2 investigators
independently reviewed the texts to exclude articles that did not match the
criteria. Differences were resolved by consensus with a third investigator.
Data Extraction Two investigators organized barriers to adherence into a framework according
to their effect on physician knowledge, attitudes, or behavior. This organization
was validated by 3 additional investigators.
Data Synthesis The 76 articles included 120 different surveys investigating 293 potential
barriers to physician guideline adherence, including awareness (n = 46), familiarity
(n = 31), agreement (n = 33), self-efficacy (n = 19), outcome expectancy (n
= 8), ability to overcome the inertia of previous practice (n = 14), and absence
of external barriers to perform recommendations (n = 34). The majority of
surveys (70 [58%] of 120) examined only 1 type of barrier.
Conclusions Studies on improving physician guideline adherence may not be generalizable,
since barriers in one setting may not be present in another. Our review offers
a differential diagnosis for why physicians do not follow practice guidelines,
as well as a rational approach toward improving guideline adherence and a
framework for future research.