Clinical practice guidelines are statements that include recommendations intended to optimize patient care that are informed by a systematic review of evidence and an assessment of the benefits and harms of alternative care options.
To be trustworthy, guidelines should:
Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Standards for Developing Trustworthy Clinical Practice Guidelines, Graham R, Mancher M, Miller Wolman D, Greenfield S, Steinberg E, eds. Clinical Practice Guidelines We Can Trust. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2011. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24983061/
There is no one database or source that brings together all clinical practice guidelines. The most comprehensive database of clinical practice guidelines is the ECRI Institute. You have to create a free account in order to search for and read any guidelines. The ECRI Institute includes TRUST (Transparency and Rigor Using Standards of Trustworthiness) Scorecard for many guidelines. Click here to read about the inclusion criteria a guideline must meet in order to be included in the ECRI database.
Other sources to search for guidelines:
Organizations also create clinical practice guidelines. Below is a list of organizations that produce clinical practice guidelines.
Most clinical practice guidelines are published in journals. Follow the AMA Style guide for citing journal articles.
Names of all authors should be given unless there are more than 6, in which case the names of the first 3 authors are used, followed by “et al.”
Use journal abbreviations instead of the full journal name.
Online Journal Article: Note that the DOI is preferred over a URL.
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