Toward Improved Implementation of Evidence-based Clinical Algorithms: Clinical Practice Guidelines, Clinical Decision Rules, and Clinical Pathways

This is a summary of the consensus-building workshop entitled "Guideline Implementation and Clinical Pathways," convened May 15, 2007, at the Academic Emergency Medicine Consensus Conference, "Knowledge Translation in Emergency Medicine: Establishing a Research Agenda and Guide Map for Evidence Uptake." A new term, "evidence-based clinical algorithms" is suggested to encompass evidence-based information codified into clinical pathways, clinical practice guidelines, and clinical decision rules. Examples of poor knowledge translation (KT) relevant to the specialty of emergency medicine are identified, followed by brief descriptions of important research and concepts that inform the research recommendations. Four broad themes for research to improve the KT of evidence-based clinical algorithms are suggested: organizational factors, cognitive factors, social factors, and motivational factors. In all cases, research regarding optimizing KT for the subthemes identified by Glasziou and Haynes, "getting the evidence straight," and "getting the evidence used," are interwoven into the thematic research recommendations. Consensus was reached that the majority of research efforts to evaluate means to improve KT need to be centered on the factors that show promise to enhance "getting the evidence used," focused especially on organizational factors.