Encouraging hospital staff to drop non-evidence-based practices for managing infant bronchiolitis works better when a targeted intervention is used, rather than just relying on guidelines being adopted, Australian researchers find.

Investigators randomised 26 hospitals providing tertiary or secondary paediatric care in Australia and New Zealand to either implement interventions designed to better promote evidence-based care for bronchiolitis or to maintain usual approaches to education around bronchiolitis treatment.

At implementation hospitals, targeted interventions included clinical leads, stakeholder meetings, train-the-trainer workshops, educational intervention delivery, use of other educational materials, and audit and feedback.

The goal of these combined efforts was to promote behaviour changes that supported evidence-based bronchiolitis care in the emergency department and paediatric inpatient units.