[www.evidence.de--assessment and utilization of clinical guidelines by primary care physicians and internists]

Compared to the generation of new scientific results, implementation and utilization of evidence based knowledge is lacking far behind. Strengths and weaknesses of evidence- and HTML-based guidelines were evaluated in an academic network of primary care physicians to better understand the expectations and information needs of GPs.

Standardized survey of 72 primary care physicians (21% female, 79% male) regarding three network based issues: "frequency of guideline use", "reasons to use/not to use guidelines", "evaluation and overall judgement of guidelines".

62.9% of participating had used net based guidelines at least once, the percentage of more frequent users (> 2 times in two months) was 40.3%. Curiosity and non-specific interest as well as a concrete medical question were the main reasons for utilization of guidelines. The overall judgement of the guidelines was positive, however, only a minority of participating physicians viewed them as a concrete help in daily practice.

Transformation of new scientific medical knowledge into daily primary care practice is only insufficiently developed. Netbased instruments of continuing medical education may serve as catalysts and should be further developed as well as evaluated.