Whichever medical field you may be in, whatever medical studies you are educating yourself with, may it be Avigna Clinical Research Institute’s diploma in clinical research in Bangalore, or any other specialized medical field, at some point, you will definitely need to familiarize yourself with clinical practice guidelines.
Clinical practice guidelines have been around for thousands of years now. Yes, you read it right. It is thousands of years! However, the written and listed modern age guidelines began in 1992, wherein guidelines were defined to be “systematically developed statements to assist practitioner and patient decisions about appropriate healthcare for specific clinical circumstances”. Ever since, thousands of guidelines have been developed and published around the world by medical specialty societies and government bodies for almost every medical field. However, to decide upon what the guidelines need to say, there is a panel of experts in the particular field that may comprise of specialists, physicians, pharmacists, nurses, generalists, and patients. These groups of experts are large, the process is long, and the costs are extremely high. You can imagine how critical the procedure may be!
Clinical practice guidelines are how-to-guides for a particular disease, condition, or any medical topic that support diagnosis, management, and treatment. But, they are derived after analyzing hundreds and thousands of other guidelines to come to a confirmed decision. At times, it so happens that clinical managers and clinicians need to choose from differing and contradictory guidelines. Guideline recommendations are derived from two main methods – evidence and personal experience. While evidence can be interpreted in multiple ways by multiple minds, personal experience is limited to the incidence of each individual expert. This is why guidelines offer the added feature of grading the recommendations, so that the logic behind each statement can be understood. The panel of experts votes on the quality of literature supporting the evidence, and what they believe to be the risk/benefit ratio, in order to determine the grade and strength of recommendation. Guidelines are usually updated every few years, which is why it is important for every professional to be familiar with all the guidelines in their chosen specialty.
With these guidelines, a lot can be achieved. The most common benefits of clinical practice guidelines include –
- Appropriate care can be determined, based on the best available scientific evidence and consensus.
- A more rational basis can be provided for referral.
- Efficient use of resources can be promoted.
- Appropriate future research can be suggested after highlighting the shortcomings of the existing literature.
- Patient outcomes are significantly improved.
With these benefits, as a student, guidelines can be great resources to learn from and educate yourself as they provide credible recommendations for various clinical topics and patient scenarios. Thus, clinical practice guidelines are the encyclopedia of the medical world.
To conclude, even though there are thousands of clinical practice guidelines exceeding hundreds of pages, you must know what each of these guidelines says! And, you must also keep track of when and what these guidelines update to.
