Guidelines for Clinical Practice

Guidelines for the clinical practice of medicine have been proposed as the solution to the whole range of current health care problems. This new book presents the first balanced and highly practical view of guidelines—their strengths, their limitations, and how they can be used most effectively to benefit health care.

The volume offers:

• Recommendations and a proposed framework for strengthening development and use of guidelines.
• Numerous examples of guidelines.
• A ready-to-use instrument for assessing the soundness of guidelines.
• Six case studies exploring issues involved when practitioners use guidelines on a daily basis.

With a real-world outlook, the volume reviews efforts by agencies and organizations to disseminate guidelines and examines how well guidelines are functioning—exploring issues such as patient information, liability, costs, computerization, and the adaptation of national guidelines to local needs.

Table of Contents

• FRONT MATTER
• SUMMARY
• 1 INTRODUCTION
• 2 DEVELOPING CLINICAL PRACTICE GUIDELINES
• 3 IMPLEMENTING GUIDELINES: OVERVIEW AND ILLUSTRATIVE CASES
• 4 IMPLEMENTING GUIDELINES: CONDITIONS AND STRATEGIES
• 5 IMPLEMENTATION: QUALITY, COST, AND RISK MANAGEMENT
• 6 THE INESCAPABLE COMPLEXITY OF DECISIONMAKING: ETHICS, COSTS . . .
• 7 EVOLUTION IN PROCEDURES AND METHODS FOR DEVELOPING PRACTICE GUIDELINES
• 8 A FRAMEWORK FOR THE FUTURE
• REFERENCES
• APPENDIXES
• A: EXAMPLES OF CLINICAL PRACTICE GUIDELINES AND RELATED MATERIALS
• B: A PROVISIONAL INSTRUMENT FOR ASSESSING CLINICAL PRACTICE GUIDELINES
• C: ROSTERS
• INDEX
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