Use of implementation science to qualitatively identify implementation determinants of COPD practice guidelines in primary care

Objectives: Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is a progressive respiratory disease with high morbidity and mortality. COPD guidelines (CPG) are greatly underutilized and studies attempting to improve this practice gap have yielded inconsistent results. We hypothesize that using implementation science can provide a detailed understanding of these practice gaps and the reasons behind them. Methods: Since primary care (PC) manages the bulk of COPD patients, in this pilot study, we use principles of implementation science to systematically explore the reasons for this implementation gap in a PC setting. We used the Consolidated Framework of Implementation Science (CFIR), a determinant framework to design semi-structured interview guides to conduct multistakeholder interviews to explore the barriers and facilitators to four key COPD-CPG with known poor uptake: inhaler education, spirometry, pulmonary rehabilitation and COPD-specific patient education from patient and provider perspectives. Qualitative analysis was performed using rapid analysis. Results: Seventeen respondents including both, patients and providers were interviewed. All these COPD-CPG were rated as 'highly important' suggesting that perceived importance alone is insufficient to bridge gaps in uptake. Respondents were least familiar with pulmonary rehabilitation. Physician time constraint was a significant reported barrier. There exist multilevel contextual barriers to each of these COPD-CPG. Discussion: To increase uptake of COPD guidelines, implementation efforts that address multilevel barriers and promote collaborative care by use of non-physician resources are likely to have higher buy-in and greater chances for success