Clinical guidelines
Learn how to assess the quality of clinical guidelines and where to find them.
What are Clinical Guidelines?
Clinical Guidelines (also known as Clinical Practice Guidelines) are recommendations intended to optimize patient care. They should be informed by a systematic review of evidence and an assessment of the benefits and harms of alternative care options (National Academies of Science).
The potential benefits of practice guidelines are only as good as the quality of the guidelines themselves. Use the following tool to assess their validity & methodology:
- AGREE IIInternational tool to assess the quality and reporting of practice guidelines.
Find Clinical Practice Guidelines
- Search for your topic in one of the key databases, and limit the publication type to guidelines
- Search Google or Library Search for your discipline or topic and clinical guidelines
- Find clinical guidelines and codes of ethics through professional association websites
- Australian Clinical Practice GuidelinesSingle access point for Australian clinical practice guidelines
- Ambulance VictoriaClinical Practice Guidelines - Ambulance and MICA Paramedics, 2019 Ed.
- National Insitute for Health & Care Excellence (UK)Evidence-based recommendations on a wide range of topics
- Queensland Ambulance Service - Clinical Practice Manual (CPM)The Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) aims to provide high standards of emergency treatment, patient care and transport for the sick and injured. The CPM reflects contemporary standards of clinical practice and includes systematically developed statements based on the best available evidence.