Recommendations for “not to do” in primary care practice

Introduction: in recent years, there has been an excess of unnecessary clinical practices in pediatrics that lack sufficient scientific evidence and generate significant costs, in addition to being bothersome and not providing additional benefits. For this reason, various scientific societies and institutions have proposed recommendations to avoid these ineffective and scientifically unjustified interventions.

Material and methods: the project was coordinated by the PrevInfad working group of the Spanish Association of Primary Care Pediatrics (AEPap). It was developed in two phases through the exchange of e-mails. In the first phase, the coordinators were asked to disseminate the project and to collect proposals for unnecessary interventions. In the second phase, the recommendations were selected using the Delphi method and two rounds of voting.

Results: in the first phase, 40 proposals for 'do not do' recommendations were obtained. In the first round of the second phase, seven proposals were accepted. Five recommendations were rejected and 28 were considered doubtful and passed to a second assessment. One additional recommendation was accepted in the second round. In total, 8 'do not do' recommendations were approved.

Conclusions: the AEPap developed a list of 'do not do' recommendations in pediatrics in collaboration with its working groups and federated associations using the Delphi methodology for consensus among experts. These recommendations aim to improve the quality of care and promote the appropriate use of resources in pediatric primary care.