Table 2.

Physicians’ attitude toward guidelines – international comparison

Study population	This study	Tunis et al6	Bochud et al14	Kunz15	Heidrich et al9	Larisch et al23	Farquhar et al7
	Internists, n=55	American College of Physicians, n=1,513	Internists, Lausanne, n=116	Internists and GPs, Germany, n=194	Internists and GPs, Germany, n=664	Neurologists, Germany, n=213	International physicians, n=11,611
A convenient source of advice	94	67	–	49	–	48	75
Good educational tools	89	64	90	42	80 (useful tools)	59	71
Likely to improve quality of care	91	65	90	60	82 (improve standard of care)	82 (intended to improve)	70 (intended to improve)
Likely to decrease health care costs	42	22	66	50	20 (main purpose to cut costs)	24 (intended to decrease)	53 (intended to decrease)
Likely to decrease malpractice suits	48	18	–	–	–	39	–
Unbiased synthesis of expert opinion	13	31	–	54	–	59	–
Oversimplified (cookbook) medicine	13	25	35	49	–	36	34 (including challenge to autonomy)
Too rigid to apply to individual patients	7	24	27	37	27	26	30 (including impractical)
A challenge to physician autonomy	4	21	21	45	13	32	34 (including oversimplified)
Developed by experts who understand little of daily clinical routine	4	–	–	–	–	25	–

Notes: All study results in percent agreement, ie, percent of responders marking 4 or 5 on a 5-point ordinal scale form 1= “strongly disagree” to 5= “strongly agree” (apart from Farquhar: “weighted mean positive response”). ”–” = no data.

Abbreviation: GPs, general practitioners.