Article contents
Clinical Practice Guidelines: who needs them?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018
Abstract
Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPGs) are systematically developed statements to assist practitioner and patient in clinical decisions about appropriate health care for specific clinical circumstances. The Royal College of Psychiatrists CPG Programme aims to develop clinical guidelines which are scientifically valid and acceptable to those affected by them. At the same time, CPGs must be responsive to advances in knowledge, and versatile enough for the demands of routine practice. Their development involves a number of stages and a variety of methods, built into a cycle of evaluation and review. The Programme has established priorities for clinical topics for CPG development through consultation with the mental health community. Well-developed CPGs would benefit clinicians, patients and purchasers of care. It Is now important to appraise their ability to change clinical practice, the associated direct and indirect costs, and their value as a medical technology. The clinical professions are in the strongest position to co-ordinate their development, and guide their evaluation.
- Type
- Original Papers
- Information
- Creative Commons
- This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
- Copyright
- Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1995
References
- 1
- Cited by
eLetters
No eLetters have been published for this article.