Guideline Development
Clinicians often feel overwhelmed by the vast volume of available evidence and uncertain about the quality of this evidence. Therefore, clinical practice guidelines, offering critically appraised and synthesised scientific evidence, are fundamental to clinicians.
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Practice guidelines can help clinicians to make better decisions based on the best research evidence. This way practise guidelines can improve patient outcomes, increase consistency and reduce ineffective practices. Often gaps are identified and thereby guidelines developers can also guide future research (1).
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This study will follow the NHMRC standards for guidelines, which align with current international best practice for guideline development (2). NHMRC is Australia’s principal organisation for supporting health and medical research. The organisation requires high levels of scientific rigour and integrity and has a long history of developing guidelines (3).
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We believe that guidelines should be patient-centred, focusing on patients and their needs. The fundamentals of care framework (4) will support the researchers to develop high-quality patient-centred guidelines.
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Practice guidelines are not meant to provide a recipe for how patients must be supported, rather they are meant to provide general guidance that must be considered according to individual patient needs and circumstances.
This study is divided into three phases. In the first phase, the Planning and designing phase, the need for the guidelines will be determined and an advisory group will be involved in scoping the guidelines. The second phase aims to Develop draft recommendations through a number of systematic reviews. In the last phase, a panel of experts will Review evidence-based recommendations and agree on a number of recommendations.
1 Steinberg, E., et al. (2011). Clinical practice guidelines we can trust, National Academies Press.
2 National Health and Medical Research Council, N. (2020). "Guidelines for Guidelines." Retrieved September 2020, 2020, from https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/guidelinesforguidelines/implement.
3 Healthdirect. "NHMRC National Health and Medical Research Council." Retrieved 16th October 2020, from https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/partners/nhmrc-national-health-and-medical-research-council.
References
1 Steinberg, E., et al. (2011). Clinical practice guidelines we can trust, National Academies Press.
2 National Health and Medical Research Council, N. (2020). "Guidelines for Guidelines." Retrieved September 2020, 2020, from https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/guidelinesforguidelines/implement.
3 Healthdirect. "NHMRC National Health and Medical Research Council." Retrieved 16th October 2020, from https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/partners/nhmrc-national-health-and-medical-research-council.
4 Kitson A, Conroy T, Kuluski K, Locock L, Lyons R. Reclaiming and redefining the Fundamentals of Care: Nursing's response to meeting patients' basic human needs. 2013