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Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) have been developed for many years with the aim of improving the quality of care. A review of the use of CPGs and assessments of CPG compliance among practitioners so far would aid the understanding of factors influencing CPG compliance. This study seeks to provide this.

A general review and discussion of CPGs in areas of their attributes, benefits and pitfalls were carried out. Articles concerning the assessment of CPG compliance were also reviewed to understand the kind of data collected for such assessments (qualitative vs quantitative), the methods used to collect data (objective versus subjective), and the assessment measures employed (process versus outcome).

A total of 57 CPG compliance assessment studies were reviewed. Almost two‐thirds employed objective methods. Of the subjective assessments, 47 per cent analysed solely quantitative data, 32 per cent analysed solely qualitative information and 21 per cent analysed both. More than four‐fifths of all studies used process measures to determine CPG compliance and only 5 per cent used solely outcome measures.

Depending on the methods used, assessments can help identify various factors influencing CPG compliance. Such factors may be related to the physician, guidelines, health system or patient. A good understanding of these factors and their role in influencing compliance behaviour will help health regulators and administrators plan better and more effective strategies to improve doctors' CPG compliance.

This review looks at the various aspects of CPGs to understand how these influence practitioners' compliance.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretical framework to improve understanding of physical asset management (AM) practices contained in well-known AM standards and guidelines.

Textual thematic analysis of physical AM standards and guidelines was carried out after developing a priori template derived from existing theories in management knowledge. Triangulation to validate the developed theoretical framework was used based on a deductive logic of inquiry equipped with semi-structured interview. The interviewees were managers of physical asset departments of 15 out of 24 ministries of Saudi public sector.

The developed theoretical framework called “systematic asset management practices” (SAMP) explains the logic behind physical AM practices contained in well-known standards and guidelines in terms of the essence of directly related practices for the life cycle of physical assets. SAMP shows that all AM standards and guidelines use a similar logic for managing the life cycles of physical assets.

AM developers can use the SAMP theoretical framework to develop and improve AM guidelines. In addition, the framework enables practitioners to further understand differences among standards and guidelines in addition to their potential future development.

This paper provides an original theory for AM practices, which originally evolved from informal to formal on the basis of practitioners’ logic.

This article aims to review the available literature on how clinicians meet the daily challenge of translating medical information into clinical EBM. It also seeks to describe the procedures involved in a local initiative in the UK to develop software applications for implementation of national clinical guidelines to enhance EBM in routine clinical practice.

It was hypothesised that improved access to these guidelines in routine clinical practice could be achieved through integrated local procedures, thereby enhancing the quality of care provided to children and adolescents with asthma or UTI. A literature search was performed using databases. To explore the preferences of the doctors and other healthcare professionals on how they accessed clinical guidelines, feedback was obtained. Stepwise implementation of the clinical guidelines was instituted over a period of three years in different primary care and hospital settings.

The professionals actively engaged with all the different stages in the implementation of the clinical guidelines. The majority preferred the interactive computerized system based on its ease of use, better aesthetic features, familiarity with the software and limited dependence on the technical skills of the users.

The limitations of this study include lack of systematic data to assess the clinical effectiveness of the guidelines' implementation. Another apparent limitation of the study is the small size of participants within the paediatric unit of each organisation where the study was conducted.

There is a need for further comparative studies between the local intervention strategies described in this study and other implementation strategies, to identify the most effective implementation methods for electronic guideline‐based systems.

Reliable high quality guidelines from reputable professional bodies could be successfully implemented at the primary or hospital‐based levels through a series of coordinated multidisciplinary interactive processes. This study has positive implications for improving the quality of care provided to children and adolescents, enhancing the role of clinical governance, provision of useful information to patients/carers and other healthcare providers.

This study highlights a potentially effective way of implementing and integrating an electronic guideline‐based computer system into local practice.

The past decade has seen an expansion of psychological treatments available to patients in the NHS. Research into the effectiveness of psychological treatments is also increasing, but this evidence is often not known or used by practitioners. This paper describes the development of a local clinical practice guideline from the research evidence to assist local GPs and psychological practitioners in selecting the most appropriate of three commonly available psychological treatments for adult patients — brief counselling, cognitive behaviour therapy, and psychodynamic psychotherapy. The steps of the guideline development process and difficulties encountered are outlined, and the local dissemination and implementation process described. A survey of GPs and practice counsellors conducted a month following distribution of the guideline found that most recipients reported it useful with many also reporting having used it already in clinical practice. The limitations as well as strengths of this local guideline development process are discussed.

Since the beginning of the 20th century environmental health researchers have known about the association between toxicant exposure and disease. However, that knoweldge has not been well integrated into mainstream medicine. Shedding light on why is the focus of this chapter.

To shed light on this issue I analyze the 2011 American Academy of Pediatrics’ clinical practice guidelines for Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), focusing specifically on the omission of environmental health research pertaining to ADHD symptoms and exposures, such as lead and mercury.

I found that while environmental researchers have been documenting the link between lead and ADHD for over forty years, the American Academy of Pediatrics has completely omitted this research from its 2012 clinical practice guidelines. Moreover, I argue this omission can be traced to competitive pressures to protect medical jurisdiction, and a reductionist worldview that emphasizes treatment over prevention.

This is the first attempt to analyze the way clinical practice guidelines help reinforce and perpetuate dominant medical perspectives. Moreover, to shed explanatory light, this chapter offers a synthetic explanation that combines materialist and ideological factors.

Beyond the specific case of ADHD, this chapter has implications for understanding how and why environmental health research is omitted from other materials produced by mainstream medicine, such as materials found in the medical school curriculum, continuing medical education, medical journals, and on the medical association web sites.

Digital transformation (DT) projects are complex and often unsuccessful. While researchers have suggested many guidelines and best practices on how to successfully roll out DT projects and how they are spread among a large number of scientific papers. The aim of this paper is to synthesize these guidelines into clear overviews.

A systematic literature review was conducted on both Scopus and Web of Science to search for papers suggesting DT guidelines or best practices. In total, 150 papers dealing with DT and guidelines were fully analyzed.

Eight main DT guidelines were found and each one was expanded with several best practices on how to implement these. The results are eight tables giving an overview of the commonly agreed-upon best practices for each DT guideline.

These overviews are useful for both researchers and practitioners, to guide future work and to be inspired respectively. This paper calls for more research on how these guidelines are followed in practice, how these differ per industry and what their impact is on the overall success of DT projects.

The synthesis of DT guidelines organized into an accessible format has not yet been conducted before, and can serve as a seminal pinpoint for future research.

The difficulties of basing healthcare on literary warrant have been explained in different ways: busy practitioners have no time to read extensively, physical access is difficult, and adequate surrogates for texts like indexes, abstracts, systematic reviews are partial in their coverage. The author suggests that a deeper problem of domain conflict must be addressed. This paper reviews problems identified in previous research on evidence‐based nursing practice, which indicates that there are conflicts between medical and nursing domains. EBM (evidence‐based medicine, or “text”) poses challenges for nurses (proponents of “caritas”). An additional surrogate for the medical corpus, the clinical guideline, is discussed. When based on inclusive consultation, this may prove to be a hospitable epistemological bridge for groups whose domains are in conflict. Drawing on “social studies of science” literature, the author explores the provenance and status of the clinical guideline as a “translation artefact” or bridging mechanism, and presents a “snapshot” case study of the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network in 1998. She suggests that the clinical guideline is a powerful documentary genre, which links several strands of information science: information retrieval, literary warrant and the politics of classification.

Health care institutions in many Western countries have developed preoperative testing and assessment guidelines to improve surgical outcomes and reduce cost of surgical care. The aims of this chapter are to (1) summarize the literature on the effect of preoperative testing on clinical outcomes, efficiency, and cost; and (2) to compare preoperative testing guidelines developed in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

We reviewed the literature from 1975 to 2014 for studies and preoperative testing guidelines.

We identified 29 empirical studies and 8 country-specific guidelines for review. Most studies indicate that preoperative testing is overused and comes at a high cost. Guidelines are tied to payment only in one country studied. This is the most recent review of the literature on preoperative testing and assessment with a focus on quality of care, efficiency, and cost outcomes. In addition, this chapter provides an international comparison of preoperative guidelines.

Several studies have shown that the mechanism of labour-intensive construction (LIC) projects can mitigate high unemployment and create skilled development, especially in developing nations. The guidelines and practices for implementation may have faced some encumbrances in some countries. Whether the current guidelines and practices for municipal infrastructure support agent (MISA) to execute LIC projects face hindrances in South Africa has yet to receive in-depth studies. Thus, this study attempts to proffer policy solutions to improve the proposed revised guidelines and practices for MISA in LIC project execution in South Africa.

The study's objectives were accomplished via a combination of 16 virtual interviews of built environment professionals and government officials involved in LIC project execution in South Africa and supported by the analysed documents. A thematic approach was used to analyse the data and presented two main themes.

Findings show lax enforcement of discretionary funds, lax institutional capacity and inadequate individual skills, among others, as the gaps in existing South Africa's LIC guidelines and practices. Also, policy solutions to address the gaps were proffered.

The suggested feasible policies will improve the proposed revised guidelines and practices for MISA in LIC project execution in South Africa. This guide will promote the development of individual skills, institutional capacities and increase employment across South Africa.

This study promotes the use of LIC to create employment and contribute to proffering measures that will improve the proposed revised third edition of the guidelines and practices for MISA to execute LIC.

The purpose of this paper is to assess medicines information sources accessed by clinicians, if sources differed in theory and practice and to find out the barriers and facilitators to effective guideline adoption.

In all, 183 doctors were surveyed. Barriers and facilitators were classified as: communication; potential adopters; innovation; organization characteristics and environmental/social/economic context.

Most of the clinicians accessed multiple information sources including standard treatment guidelines, but also consulted seniors/colleagues in practice. The top three factors influencing clinical practice guideline adoption were innovation characteristics, environmental context and individual characteristics. The respondents differed in the following areas: concerns about flexibility offered by the guideline; denying patients’ individuality; professional autonomy; insights into gaps in current practice and evidence-based practice; changing practices with little or no benefit. Barriers included negative staff attitudes/beliefs, guideline integration into organizational structures/processes, time/resource constraints. Fearing third parties (government and insurance companies) restricting medicines reimbursement and poor liability protection offered by the guidelines emerged as the barriers. Facilitators include aligning organizational structures/processes with the innovation; providing leadership support to guide diffusion; increasing awareness and enabling early innovation during pre/in-service training, with regular feedback on outcomes and use.

Guideline adoption in clinical practice is partly within doctors’ control. There are other key prevailing factors in the local context such as environmental, social context, professional and organizational culture affecting its adoption. Organizational policy and accreditation standards necessitating adherence can serve as a driver.

This survey among clinicians, despite limitations, gives helpful insights. While favourable attitudes may be helpful, clinical adoption could be improved more effectively by targeting barriers.