[Combined quantitative and qualitative methods to identify local facilitators of and barriers to physician's adherence to clinical practice guidelines]. / Analyse qualitative et quantitative des déterminants à l'application de recommandations professionnelles (RP) par les médecins.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: The effectiveness of Clinical Practice Guideline (CPG) implementation interventions could be improved by their adaptation to facilitators of and barriers to practice change in each setting. Very few is known about these local factors in French hospitals. Our objectives were to identify the facilitator factors of and barriers to physician's adherence to CPG in internal medicine wards in France and to determine the factors most strongly statistically associated to CPG adherence. METHODS: Combined qualitative and quantitative methods. Two CPGs were chosen as examples. The settings were internal medicine wards of hospitals of the Aquitaine region voluntary to participate. Qualitative analyses were conducted in the internal medicine wards of 5 hospitals in the Aquitaine region selected among the 12 voluntary hospitals to represent the variability of situations. QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS: A questionnaire was constituted by the factors retrieved through the qualitative analyses and a previous literature review as barriers or facilitator factors to physician's adherence to CPG and asked the physicians on the degree of CPG adherence. It was sent to each physician of the internal medicine wards of the 12 voluntary hospitals. The responses to the questionnaire allowed the analysis of the frequency of each factor and the strength of the statistical association between these factors and CPG adherence. RESULTS: These analyses focused on the importance of the management, particularly the role of ward head and of the exchange between physicians. The attitude to CPGs varied according to the individual positionnement on the professional hierarchy, function of the quantity of research activities and of the local, regional and national radiance of the ward. Organisational difficulties as professionals and patients turn over, work overload, lack of coordination between wards were organisational barriers to CPG adherence. The quantitative analysis confirmed the role of managerial and organisational factors in the CPG adherence. CONCLUSION: Following step was to validate a tool of barriers to CPG adherence identification and to study the effectiveness of this a priori identification in improving CPG adherence.