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Putting evidence into context: some advice for guideline writers

¹ Therapeutic Guidelines Limited
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
² St George’s, University of London
London, UK
³ Agency for Quality in Medicine, Berlin
and Medical Faculty, University of Cologne, Cologne
Germany

Key Words: guidelines • evidence-based medicine

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

INTRODUCTION
Evidence-based medicine (EBM) has been defined as the "integration of best research evidence with clinical expertise and patient values."¹ Though a laudable ideal, it is not feasible for individual clinicians to review, interpret, and apply all relevant evidence all the time. Hence clinicians should have access to "a set of tools and resources for finding and applying current best evidence from research for the care of individual patients."² The goal of clinical guideline writers is to perform part of this role, but they too must resolve these practical challenges if they are to provide tools to help clinicians deliver real evidence-based practice.^3,4 Here we consider some challenges for guideline writers when producing clinical advice that meets the demands of busy clinicians.

INTERPRETATION AND APPLICATION OF EVIDENCE
Knowledge to support decision making may be derived from published research, locally generated data, clinician experience, the law, and patient perspectives. Each can be regarded as "supporting evidence," so . . . [Full text of this article]