Clinical practice guidelines, "systematically developed statements to assist practitioner and patient decisions about appropriate health care for specific clinical circumstances"1, are an important resource for evidence-based medicine.
Now you can locate current practice guidelines, issued by countless agencies and organizations, through a single database on the web.
The National Guideline Clearinghouse (NGC), sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (with the American Medical Association and the American Association of Health Plans), collects, organizes, summarizes and compares clinical practice guidelines. NGC also provides links to the full-text source documents, or order information for print guidelines. In addition, the site includes news, bibliographies, an electronic forum and, (where available) links to PDA versions of practice guidelines.
Detailed search options allow users to locate guidelines by disease/condition, treatment/intervention, issuing organization, clinical specialty, or intended audience. Searches may also be limited by age, sex, publication date, or whether or not the guideline contains patient resources, an implementation plan, a cost analysis or a clinical algorithm.
The National Guideline Clearinghouse site is a convenient, comprehensive, and current source for finding practice guidelines. In addition, NGC's summaries, syntheses, and comparisons facilitate the use and interpretation of the documents.- Institute of Medicine. (1990). Clinical Practice Guidelines: Directions for a New Program, M.J. Field and K.N. Lohr (eds.) Washington, DC: National Academy Press. page 38.
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