Unfortunately, it is not always made clear in the survey questions of these studies whether barriers have been ‘personally experienced’. Perceived importance of particular factors may not necessarily correspond with actual importance. The application of EBP in physiotherapy has been found to be associated with modifiable individual factors such as attitudes,

skills, knowledge, higher levels of education and more post-graduate training; modifiable organisational factors such as access to evidence and managerial support; and non-modifiable learn more factors such as younger age and less time in the profession. However, these factors have been established in cross-sectional research which precludes causal inferences concerning the mechanisms by which EBP can be achieved. Several types of implementation interventions or strategies exist for promoting the transfer of research findings into clinical practice. These have been classified by

the Cochrane GS-7340 Effective Practice and Organisation of Care (EPOC) group into interventions oriented towards health professionals, financial interventions, organisational interventions, and regulatory interventions (Mowatt et al 2001). In physiotherapy, research is limited on the effectiveness of implementation interventions for increased EBP. One randomised controlled trial examined the effects of an evidence-based education package using local opinion leaders (Stevenson et al 2006). A before-after study examined the effects of presentations of EBP-relevant information (such as effective interventions for patients with breast cancer) (Fruth et al 2010). Both interventions had very modest impact on the physiotherapists’ clinical practice. This finding is largely consistent with research on educational measures across also different health care settings and professions. Overall, effects of most educational programs to change clinical behaviour tend to be small, but there are indications that interactive and personal education (eg, small-scale meetings and outreach

visits) is more effective than passive education (eg, written material and large-scale meetings) (Wensing and Grol 2005). Clinical guidelines represent another approach to transferring research findings into clinical practice. Efforts to synthesise the evidence for interventions to facilitate guideline implementation in physiotherapy have yielded two systematic reviews (Van der Wees et al 2008, Menon et al 2009). The reviews, which both included the same two randomised controlled trials of guideline implementation strategies, concluded that active, multifaceted strategies were superior to passive strategies for improving knowledge and changing behaviour, but they had no significant effect on patient health or costs of care.