Medical practice guidelines are becoming more and more important in guiding medical practice. Data from research in somatic medicine show that doctors are sufficiently aware of the existence of guidelines, but they do not put them in practice in the treatment of their patients. In this article the results of a study into the implementation process of an experimental guideline development are described. It is a guideline for a discharge letter on psychiatric patients, after their dismissal from a psychiatric hospital.
Representatives of the experimental group of psychiatric hospitals (n = 11) took part in the guideline development. They were also instructed how to disseminate the guideline under the doctors of their own hospital. The representatives of the psychiatric hospitals in the control group (n = 12) received the guideline without further instruction with the request to disseminate it among the doctors in the hospital. The doctors in the experimental group appeared to be more familiar with the guideline but hardly made better use of it in daily practice. Semistructured interviews with the representatives of the psychiatric hospitals in the experimental group revealed that changing professional behavior, being a complex process, needs more than one simple intervention.