Physicians' attitudes and usage barriers to clinical guidelines in the context of personality traits

Purpose of this research is to present factors affecting the frequency of guideline usage in the context of physicians' personality traits, attitudes towards clinical practice guidelines, usage barriers to guidelines. As a data collection tool, the five-factor personality inventory was used along with a survey designed on the basis of literature, including statements regarding attitudes towards clinical guidelines and usage barriers to guidelines. The data was collected from 245 physicians who work in a public hospital. Analysis of the data was conducted with SPSS (23) and AMOS (24) statistic software. In this analysis, Explanatory Factor Analysis, Confirmatory Factor Analysis, Kruskal Wallis H Analysis, Mann Whitney U Analysis, Pearson Correlation Analysis, Multiple Regression Analysis, and Structural Regression Analysis were used. In findings of the analysis; these were found that there were significant relationships between physicians' personality traits, attitudes towards clinical practice guidelines, usage barriers to guidelines and guideline usage; personality traits, physicians' attitudes towards clinical practice guidelines and usage barriers to guidelines were determinants of guideline usage; physicians' attitudes towards clinical guideline was in mediating role in the relationship between physician traits and guideline usage. In the light of all findings, it is possible to say that physicians' personality traits have a significant effect on physicians' attitudes towards guidelines, usage barriers to guidelines and guideline usage. It is thought that educating physicians on guidelines, raising awareness and implementing required organizational arrangements can be useful in order to increase guideline usage.