标题:The Ontario printed educational message (OPEM) trial to narrow the evidence-practice gap with respect to prescribing practices of general and family physicians: a cluster randomized controlled trial, targeting the care of individuals with diabetes and hypertension in Ontario, Canada
摘要:There are gaps between what family practitioners do in clinical practice and the evidence-based ideal. The most commonly used strategy to narrow these gaps is the printed educational message (PEM); however, the attributes of successful printed educational messages and their overall effectiveness in changing physician practice are not clear. The current endeavor aims to determine whether such messages change prescribing quality in primary care practice, and whether these effects differ with the format of the message. The design is a large, simple, factorial, unblinded cluster-randomized controlled trial. PEMs will be distributed with informed, a quarterly evidence-based synopsis of current clinical information produced by the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, Toronto, Canada, and will be sent to all eligible general and family practitioners in Ontario. There will be three replicates of the trial, with three different educational messages, each aimed at narrowing a specific evidence-practice gap as follows: 1) angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, hypertension treatment, and cholesterol lowering agents for diabetes; 2) retinal screening for diabetes; and 3) diuretics for hypertension. For each of the three replicates there will be three intervention groups. The first group will receive informed with an attached postcard-sized, short, directive