Do concussion clinicians use clinical practice guidelines?

ABSTRACT

Objective: Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) synthesize research evidence for health professionals and improve consistency of clinical care. However, it is unclear if concussion clinicians use them in their practice. We aimed to describe which CPGs New Zealand clinicians used and facilitators and barriers to uptake of these resources.

Materials and Methods: We used snowballing recruitment methods to survey New Zealand concussion clinicians. Descriptive statistics and qualitative description were used to evaluate survey responses.

Results: Ninety-six clinicians took part in the survey. A majority (70%) indicated they were aware of and had used at least one concussion CPG. Facilitators and barriers to using CPGs related to clinician experience, nature of the CPG, the work context, characteristics of clients and whether strategies were provided to encourage their use.

Conclusions: Participants viewed concussion CPGs as helpful tools for informing clinical practice. That less experienced clinicians were less likely to use concussion CPGs than more experienced clinicians suggests there is an opportunity to develop strategies to improve the uptake of CPGs among newer clinicians. This and other areas of further research include how well CPGs capture relevant cultural factors and the role of case complexity in clinicians' willingness to use concussion CPGs.

KEYWORDS:

• Clinical practice guidelines
• concussion outcomes
• evidence-based practice
• clinician perspectives

Funding and Acknowledgements

Blinded

Declarations and Disclosures

The authors report no declarations of interest.

Declarations and Disclosures

The authors report no declarations of interest.

Do concussion clinicians use clinical practice guidelines?

Additional information

Funding

Funding was made available by the Centre for Postgraduate Nursing Studies, University of Otago, Christchurch, NZ to facilitate dissemination of the survey to professional bodies. The authors would like to thank the clinicians who offered their time for piloting the online survey questions and participants who gave their time to respond to the survey during a difficult time associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.