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What is Academic Detailing?

Opioid Prescribing Issues
  • 15 May 2023

Academic detailing is a tested method of delivering tailored training and technical assistance to health care providers in an effort to establish the use best practices.[2,3] Academic detailing involves the deployment of structured visits to health care practices for the purpose of educational outreach.[1] Historically, academic detailing has been delivered face-to-face, but Web-based and other technologies can provide alternative channels of communication and educational dissemination. Academic detailing has been used across many preventive, acute, and chronic disease care settings to provide education and improve best practices, clinical service delivery, and quality of care. [4,5,6,7] Field experts often build relationships over time with health systems by helping health care providers and administrators understand how to address a specific clinical or quality issue.[8]

References 

  1. Barth, Kelly S. DO; Ball, Sarah PharmD; Adams, Rachel S. PhD, MPH; Nikitin, Ruslan MS, BA; Wooten, Nikki R. PhD, LISW-CP; Qureshi, Zaina P. PhD, MPH, MS, DMM, RPh; Larson, Mary J. PhD, MPA. Development and feasibility of an academic detailing intervention to improve prescription drug monitoring program use among physicians. Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions 37(2):p 98-105, Spring 2017. | DOI: 10.1097/CEH.0000000000000149
  2. Thomson O’Brien MA, Oxman AD, Davis DA, Haynes RB, Freemantle N, Harvey EL. Educational outreach visits: Effects on professional practice and health care outcomes. The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2000(2):CD000409.
  3. Mazmanian PE, Davis DA. Continuing medical education and the physician as a learner: Guide to the evidence. JAMA. 2002;288(9):1057-1060.
  4. Soumerai SB, Avorn J. Principles of educational outreach (‘academic detailing’) to improve clinical decision making. JAMA. 1990;263(4):549-556.
  5. Meehan TP, Van Hoof TJ, Giannotti TE, Tate JP, Elwell A, Curry M, et al. A descriptive study of educational outreach to promote use of quality improvement tools in primary care private practice. American Journal of Medical Quality. 2009;24(2):90-98.
  6. Van Hoof TJ, Miller NE, Meehan TP. Dop published studies of educational outreach provide documentation of potentially important characteristics? American Journal of Medical Quality. 2013.
  7. Avorn J, Fischer M. ‘Bench to behavior’: Translating comparative effectiveness research into improved clinical practice. Health Affairs. 2010;29(10):1891-1900.
  8. Baldwin, Laura-Mae MD, MPH; Fischer, Michael A. MD, MS; Powell, Jennifer MPH, MBA; Holden, Erika BA; Tuzzio, Leah MPH; Fagnan, Lyle J. MD; Hummel, Jeff MD, MPH; Parchman, Michael L. MD, MPH . Virtual Educational Outreach Intervention in Primary Care Based on the Principles of Academic Detailing. Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions. 2018;38(4):p 269-275.DOI: 10.1097/CEH.0000000000000224