During the annual congress of KNGF a 2nd conference on clinical guidelines was organized for members of the European Region of WCPT. The theme of the invitational conference was: ‘Implementation of clinical guidelines: improving the quality of physical therapy care within chronic disease management’. In 2006 the European Region of the World Confederation for Physical Therapy (ER-WCPT) organized the 1st conference on clinical guidelines to set out strategy for further development and implementation of clinical guidelines. The focus of this second conference was implementation of clinical guidelines to improve the quality of physical therapy care. Implementation of innovations requires a solid and structured strategy to change clinical practice.

The morning session was open for all participants of the KNGF congress and started with an overview of strategies to implement change of clinical practice and professional behavior. We further explored barriers for implementation using COPD as example, a chronic disease with high relevance for implementation related to multidisciplinary treatment, smoking cessation and self-management support. During the afternoon Member Organizations of ER-WCPT worked on a strategy to implement high quality physical therapy treatment. We used a model developed by Grol and Wensing to design strategies for implementation. The objective was to develop a draft implementation plan, which can be finalized and adapted for individual use by each Member Organization.