Prosthetic prescription in the Netherlands: an interview with clinical experts

In the process of guideline development for prosthetic prescription in the Netherlands the authors made a study of the daily clinical practice of lower limb prosthetics. Besides the evidence-based knowledge from literature the more implicit knowledge from clinical experts is of importance for guideline development. In order to obtain this information the authors performed both an observational study of clinical practice and an interview study with 11 clinical experts from the three key disciplines in this field. The latter study is presented here as a descriptive and qualitative study. The combination of the opinions on prescription criteria given in these semi-structured interviews appeared divided with regard to various options in the prescription of a lower limb prosthesis. However, the implicit knowledge is considered by the authors of importance for the consensus procedure on guideline development. Prosthetic prescription criteria seem to be based on local experience and partly on assumptions. A consensus procedure can lead to improvement of the knowledge about prosthetic prescription.