Do Clinicians Want Recommendations?

Not Applicable

Completed

• Conditions: Healthy Individuals (Clinicians)
• Interventions: Other: Evidence summary alone plus a recommendation; Other: Evidence summary alone

• Registration Number: NCT02006017
• Lead Sponsor: McMaster University

Brief Summary

The use of the best evidence available for decision-making is nowadays an undisputed goal in health care. However, this is not always achieved in the context of clinical practice. Two of the potential solutions to bridge the gap between evidence and the clinical practice are the "evidence summaries" and the "evidence based recommendations". However, it is not clear, and frequently controversial, to what extent clinicians consider helpful recommendations accompanying evidence summaries. The investigators will explore this question by conducting a study where clinicians will be randomized to receive a clinical scenario accompanied by an evidence summary plus a recommendation and a second clinical scenario accompanied by only for an evidence summary (group A) or vice versa (Group B). The outcome will be clinicians' preferences.

Detailed Description

Not available

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2013-09-30
• Study First Submitted: 2013-11-19
• Study First Submitted QC: 2013-12-04
• Study First Posted: 2013-12-09
• Status Verified: 2017-08
• Primary Completion: 2017-08-30
• Study Completion: 2017-08-30
• Last Update Submitted: 2017-08-31
• Last Update Posted: 2017-09-01

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: COMPLETED
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 467

Inclusion Criteria

• Were trained as Medical Doctors
• Practice primary care or general internal medicine.

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Exclusion Criteria

none

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Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: PARALLEL

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Group B	Evidence summary alone	We will present to participants two general clinical scenarios. The first scenario will be accompanied by an evidence summary alone and a second scenario will be accompanied by an evidence summary plus a recommendation
Group A	Evidence summary alone plus a recommendation	We will present to participants two general clinical scenarios. The first scenario will be accompanied by an evidence summary plus a recommendation and a second scenario will be accompanied by an evidence summary alone
Group A	Evidence summary alone	We will present to participants two general clinical scenarios. The first scenario will be accompanied by an evidence summary plus a recommendation and a second scenario will be accompanied by an evidence summary alone
Group B	Evidence summary alone plus a recommendation	We will present to participants two general clinical scenarios. The first scenario will be accompanied by an evidence summary alone and a second scenario will be accompanied by an evidence summary plus a recommendation

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Preferences	Immediately after the intervention (Survey)	Preference: for the evidence summary plus the accompanying recommendation or for the evidence summary alone. We will assess this outcome with a 7-point Lickert scale This outcome will be assessed after the presentation of the two clinical scenarios.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Interpretation of benefits and harms	Immediately after the intervention (Survey)	Interpretation of benefits and harms: Distribution of the interpretation of the magnitude of the benefits in comparison with harms
Understanding	Immediately after the intervention (Survey)	Understanding: Percentage of correct answers regarding the understanding of the evidence: understanding of baseline risk, risk difference, confidence interval and quality of the evidence assessment.
Intended course of action	Immediately after the intervention (Survey)	Intended course of action: For the clinical questions related with strong recommendations, we will compare the percentage of appropriate decisions (i.e. decisions that match the strong recommendation).

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

McMaster University; 🇨🇦 Hamilton, Ontario, Canada