Guidelines for clinical practice

Clinical practice guidelines are systematically developed statements that are intended to support medical decision making in well-defined clinical situations. Essentially, their object is to reduce the variability in medical practice, to improve quality, and to make appropriated control of the financial resources possible. Internationally, ever more organisations, associations, and institutions are concerned with the development of guidelines in many different areas of care. Making implicit knowledge explicit is one of the associated advantages of guidelines: they have a potential utility in training, in process evaluation, and in the reevaluation of outcome studies. In liability issues, their existence has a double effect: they can be used to justify medical behaviour, and they constitute a generally accepted reference point. A derivative problem is the legal liability of the compilers of the guidelines. The principle of the guideline approach can be challenged academically: science cannot give a definition of optimal care with absolute certainty. What is called objectivity often rests on methodologically disputable analyses; also the opinion of opinion leaders is not always a guarantee for scientific soundness. Moreover, patients are not all identical: biological variability, situational factors, patient expectations, and other elements play a role in this differentiation. Clinicians are often hesitant with respect to clinical guidelines: they are afraid of cookbook medicine and curtailment of their professional autonomy. Patients fear reduction of individualization of care and the use of guidelines as a rationing instrument. The effects of the introduction of clinical practice guidelines on medical practice, on the results and on the cost of care vary but are generally considered to be favourable. The choice of appropriate strategies in development, dissemination, and implementation turns out to be of critical importance. The article ends with concrete suggestions for the various steps in the development of guidelines and their actual compilation.