Tailored interventions to change professional practice are interventions planned following an investigation into the factors that explain current professional practice and any reasons for resisting new practice. These factors are referred to as barriers to change. The barriers may vary in different healthcare settings, groups of healthcare professionals or clinical tasks. It is widely assumed that efforts to change professional practice have a lower likelihood of success unless these barriers are identified and taken into account.
In a previous review that was able to include only 15 studies, we were unable to conclude that tailoring was effective. However, more studies of tailoring have been published and therefore we have incorporated the new studies into an update of the review.
We have included 26 studies in the new review. The findings indicate that tailored interventions can change professional practice. As yet, there is insufficient evidence on the most effective approaches to tailoring, including how barriers should be identified and how interventions should be selected to address the barriers. In addition, there is no evidence about the cost-effectiveness of tailored interventions compared to other interventions to change professional practice. Consequently, it is reasonable to employ low-cost tailored interventions in practice, but evidence on the cost-effectiveness of the alternative methods of tailoring is required before use of more costly tailored approaches can be justified.