Clinical guidelines: acceptance and promotion.

Clinical guidelines: acceptance and promotion "Approximately 85% of all prescriptions written by senior physicians who graduated from medical school in 1960 will be for a drug about which they have received no formal education." This estimate was made by the American College of Physicians in 1988'; five years on the percentage is undoubtedly higher. Use of the new is not confined to drugs. Clinicians eagerly adopt technical innovations -the rapid growth in laparoscopic surgery provides one recent example. Unfortunately, new knowledge is not adopted as enthusiastically as new products. There is a gap between what the scientific evidence shows to be best patient management and actual clinical practice.