Provider attitudes toward Standardized Clinical Assessment and Management Plans (SCAMPs)

Despite the growing importance of clinical guidelines, their adoption has encountered significant resistance among clinicians. We developed Standardized Clinical Assessment and Management Plans (SCAMPs) as an innovative, clinician-led approach to building, implementing, and constantly improving flexible guidelines. We hypothesized that SCAMPs would fit well within the culture of medicine and that clinicians would therefore prefer SCAMPs over other guidelines.

We implemented an anonymous, computer-based survey to analyze provider attitudes toward SCAMPs at our institution.

Sixty-nine providers completed the questionnaire (73% response rate). Most providers reported a positive opinion about SCAMPs along axes of overall familiarity (83%), trust (91-94%), utility (75-87%), and overall attitude (64%). Fewer providers felt familiar with the SCAMP improvement process (60% neutral to unfamiliar) or knew that they played a role in this process (62% said no or unsure). Sixty-five percent reported experiencing an erosion in their autonomy with SCAMPs; when comparing this to other guidelines, 38% said other guidelines erode more, 26% felt SCAMPs erode more, and 36% were neutral. The plurality of providers chose SCAMPs as their preferred means to incorporate evidence-based medicine into their practice (46% vs 29% for clinical practice guidelines, 25% for other guidelines).

Providers look upon SCAMPs favorably and believe that SCAMPs successfully address numerous barriers to guideline adoption. Furthermore, SCAMPs are the preferred means to incorporate evidence-based medicine into practice among providers surveyed. SCAMPs may represent an important step in building guidelines that fit into the culture of medicine, obtain clinician "buy-in," and better influence clinical decision making.