Advances in medical education and practice
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Little is known about the attitudes toward, use of, and perceived barriers to clinical guidelines in Switzerland, a country with no national guideline agency. Moreover, there is no available data on the objective assessment of guideline knowledge in Switzerland. Therefore, we conducted a study at a large university's Department of General Internal Medicine in Switzerland to assess physicians' attitudes toward, use of, perceived barriers to, and knowledge of clinical guidelines. ⋯ In general, this study found favorable physician attitudes toward clinical guidelines. However, several barriers hindering guideline implementation were identified. The importance of improving guideline implementation was supported by modest results in a guideline knowledge test.