Electronic version - PDF

The topic of this manual - clinical practice guidelines - is at the intersection of the interests of clinicians and public health professionals. Clinical guidelines, as is widely recognized worldwide, are an essential tool for improving the quality of medical care. The purpose of clinical guidelines is to promote best clinical practice to improve the quality of disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment. This publication summarizes the experience of leading countries, which shows that clinical guidelines that are not based on evidence-based principles can do more harm than good. These principles, on the one hand, reduce the time between recent scientific advances and their introduction into wider practice, and, on the other hand, pose a barrier to unproven and ineffective treatments and diagnostics. The structured questionnaires presented in the appendices will help physicians and health care providers to better evaluate the methodological level of both individual scientific publications and existing clinical guidelines.

ISBN 5-89084-016-9

M., Media Sphere Publishing House, 2004, 135 pp.