Guidelines (and Protocols and Care Pathways) Guidelines Guidelines reduce unacceptable or undesirable variations in practice and provide a focus for discussion among health professionals and patients. They enable professionals from different disciplines to come to an agreement about treatment and devise a quality framework, against which practice can be measured. Guidelines can help commissioners and purchasers to make informed decisions and provide managers with a useful framework for assessing treatment costs. Protocols Protocols are rigid statements allowing little or no flexibility or variation. A protocol sets out a precise sequence of activities to be adhered to in the management of a specific clinical condition. There is a logical sequence and precision of listed activities. Care pathways Care pathways determine locally agreed, multidisciplinary practice, based on guidelines and evidence where available, for a specific patient/client group. Care pathways form all or part of the clinical record, document the care given and help to evaluate outcomes for continuous quality monitoring. See also: "What is an Integrated Care Pathway?" Good clinical guidelines should be... ● Valid – leading to the results expected of them. ● Reproducible – if using the same evidence, other guideline groups would come to the same results. ● Cost-effective – reducing the inappropriate use of resources. ● Representative/multidisciplinary – by involving key groups and their interests. ● Clinically applicable – patient populations affected should be unambiguously defined. ● Flexible – by identifying the expectations relating to recommendations as well as patient preferences. ● Clear – unambiguous language, which is readily understood by clinicians and patients, should be used. ● Reviewable – the date and process of review should be stated. ● Amenable to clinical audit – the guidelines should be capable of translation into explicit audit criteria. (Adapted from the What is series.) | 
Centre for Health Evidence, Canada
Danish Secretariat for Clinical Guidelines, National Board of Health
