General practitioners' views of clinical guidelines for the management of asthma.

OBJECTIVES

To assess the views of GPs on the value of clinical guidelines for the management of asthma.

DESIGN

Structured questionnaire survey.

SETTING

Bromley Health District.

SUBJECTS

All (160) GPs in health district.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

Evaluation of each item of clinical guidelines as to whether 'obvious', 'useful' or 'controversial'.

RESULTS

Ninety-four (59%) of GPs responded. There was considerable variation in views on all 26 guideline items in the questionnaire. The average GP thought that 11.5 items were obvious, 8.5 useful and 5.7 controversial, but these views showed no relationship to the GP's age, sex, ethnicity or partnership size.

CONCLUSION

Clinical guidelines are usually written to be of value to a wide number of clinicians, but it appears that GPs at least have more individual needs on issues of clinical management. This may explain the reported limited impact of guidelines on clinical practice.