The principal purpose of clinical practice guidelines is to bring about improvement in the quality of routine care. This chapter provides an introduction to the issues of dissemination and implementation for local teams. Most of this information is laid out in the form of check-lists designed to be of practical assistance to those responsible for disseminating, implementing or using these guidelines.
Awareness is created by effective dissemination.
Different audiences may benefit from different strategies. Tailoring and targeting, for example, are likely to be quite different for an audience of service managers than for an audience of nursing staff. 6.2 Implementation Even effective dissemination of a set of guidelines will not necessarily ensure their use. Complex factors influence how and why new knowledge affects people's practice. It has been a subject of interest for theorists and researchers in many areas, including psychology, agriculture, education and management.