Background: Tinnitus remains a scientific and clinical problem in that while knowledge on effective treatment and management for tinnitus is growing, this has impacted on clinical practice minimally. There is evidence that prolonged, obscure and indirect referral-trajectories persist in usual tinnitus care. The COST Action TINNET (2014-2018) Working group 1 ‘Clinical guidelines’ (http://tinnet.tinnitusresearch.net/index.php/2015-10-29-10-22-16/wg-1-clinical) consists of European clinical experts from different fields with the main objective to develop meaningful and actionable clinical guidelines for the management, assessment and treatment for tinnitus patients.

Aim: The first step towards the development of meaningful and actionable European guidelines for the assessment and treatment of tinnitus patients involves the scoping of current existence- and knowledge of standards in tinnitus care. It is widely acknowledged that efforts to change professional practice are more successful if barriers are identified and implementation activities are systematically tailored to the specific determinants of practice.

Method: A pan European survey amongst experts, clinicians and policy makers was carried out to gain insight into the status-quo of expert-views on treatment and assessment, standards, and guidelines in tinnitus healthcare throughout Europe.

Results: Results show that there are differences in reports on national healthcare structure, tinnitus-definitions and characteristics of the tinnitus-patient, and management, treatment and diagnostics, when comparing north, south and eastern European countries. These differences indicate 7 important barriers to be taken into considerations when developing meaningful and actionable European guidelines for the assessment and treatment of tinnitus.