Characteristics of Academic Detailing: Results of a Literature Review

Background: Academic detailing is an evidence-based strategy to improve patient care. Efforts to understand the intervention and to use it strategically require an understanding of its important characteristics. A recent systematic review and a subsequent reporting framework call for more accurate and complete reporting of continuing medical education interventions.

Objectives: Building on a previously published systematic review of 69 studies, we sought to determine how an expanded set of 106 academic detailing studies, including many recently published articles, fared with respect to reporting of important data about this intervention.

Methods: We conducted a search of MEDLINE, the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (clinical) database, and Scopus, from which we identified 38 additional randomized controlled trials published from August 2007 through March 2013. Including the original 69 studies, we abstracted 106 available English-language studies and quantitatively analyzed information about 4 important characteristics of academic detailing: content of visits, clinicians being visited, communication process underlying visits, and outreach workers making visits.

Results: We found considerable variation (36.5%-100%) in the extent of reporting intervention characteristics, especially about the communication process underlying visits and the outreach workers making visits. The best overall documentation of intervention characteristics of any single study was 68%. Results also demonstrate wide variation in the approach to academic detailing.

Conclusions: This study demonstrates the need for a standardized approach to collecting and reporting data about academic detailing interventions. Our findings also highlight opportunities for using academic detailing more effectively in research and quality-improvement efforts.