Help on hand to translate research into clinical interventions

Researchers are poor at describing the health interventions they recommend as a result of their studies, according to academics who have published a guide in the British Medical Journal to help the process.

The Template for Intervention Description and Replication checklist and guide contains 12 items that every researcher should ensure their intervention description contains, so that it is more useful to clinicians. The ideal description would include a list of the materials needed, where it is best performed and for how long, plus how to tailor treatment to individual patients.

The paper was written by researchers from Australia, Canada, France and the UK, led by Tammy Hoffman, an associate professor of clinical epidemiology at Bond University in Australia, and was published in the BMJ on 7 March.