Do Clinicians Want Recommendations?

Study Overview
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Brief Summary
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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.

Official Title
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Do Clinicians Want Recommendations? A Randomized Trial Comparing Evidence Summaries With and Without Evidence Based Recommendations

Conditions
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Healthy Individuals (Clinicians)

Intervention / Treatment
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* Other: Evidence summary alone plus a recommendation
* Other: Evidence summary alone


Participation Criteria
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Eligibility Criteria
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Inclusion Criteria: Were trained as Medical Doctors Practice primary care or general internal medicine. Exclusion Criteria: none
Sexes Eligible for Study
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All

Accepts Healthy Volunteers
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Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Study Plan
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How is the study designed?
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Design Details

Primary Purpose: Other
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention Model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: Single


Arms and Interventions

| Participant Group/Arm | Intervention/Treatment |
| --- | --- |
| Experimental: Group A<br>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 | Other: Evidence summary alone plus a recommendation<br> <br> Other: Evidence summary alone<br> <br> |
| Experimental: Group B<br>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 | Other: Evidence summary alone plus a recommendation<br> <br> Other: Evidence summary alone<br> <br> |

What is the study measuring?
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Primary Outcome Measures

| Outcome Measure | Measure Description | Time Frame |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Preferences | 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. | Immediately after the intervention (Survey) | 

Secondary Outcome Measures

| Outcome Measure | Measure Description | Time Frame |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Understanding | 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. | Immediately after the intervention (Survey) | 
| Interpretation of benefits and harms | Interpretation of benefits and harms: Distribution of the interpretation of the magnitude of the benefits in comparison with harms | Immediately after the intervention (Survey) | 
| Intended course of action | 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). | Immediately after the intervention (Survey) |