Laurie Dunn (Six Nations FHT and PAACT); John Jordan (Associate Professor, Dept. of Family Medicine, University of Western Ontario); Frank Martino (McMaster University, Hamilton and Chief of Family Medicine at the William Osler); James Meuser (Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto, Faculty of Medicine); Joanne Opsteen (Director, Nursing and Health Policy Nurse Practitioner Association of Ontario; East EndCHC); John Pilla (Medication Use Management Services (MUMS), Toronto, ON); John Stewart (Port Perry Medical Associates, Port Perry, Ontario); Walter Rosser (Department of Family Medicine, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario); Charlene Welsh (West Durham Family Health Team, Pickering, Ontario)

Synopsis

A user-funded quality assurance model that includes the target audience in the development and implementation of evidence based materials is effective in primary care knowledge translation (KT).

Purpose

An overview of lessons learned with respect to primary care, community-based KT will be provided. This includes the development, implementation and evaluation of family practice guidelines and the collection and integration of user feedback into subsequent iterations.

Methods

Descriptive study reviewing cumulative data of six previous evaluation studies, supplemented with new qualitative and survey data that was obtained from on-site program and post-reflective evaluations at workshops held from 1995 to 2011.

Results

The Anti-infective Guidelines were first published in 1994 following a lengthy modified Delphi development process; PArtners for Appropriate Community Therapy (PAACT) is a national research and education network of family physicians, nurse practitioners and pharmacists that comprises the implementation arm of these and other guidelines in this series.Two of the critical lessons learned regarding primary care KT are: 1) Health professionals must have full editorial independence in the development and implementation of the knowledge 2) A user funded model may be the best option to fund an unbiased, practical and sustainable KT program.

Conclusions

The PAACT program is an inter-professional KT program that has been used to successfully transfer current research knowledge to thousands of front-line clinicians across the country over the last two decades. If this program is expanded on a larger scale it would assure the better use of medications and benefit the health of Canadians.