Evidence-based Guidelines

Tools for closing the gap between what physicians actually do and what scientific evidence supports, evidence-based guidelines bring together the best external evidence and other knowledge necessary for decision-making about specific health problems. The major benefit of evidence-based guidelines is to improve the quality of care that patients receive by offering explicit recommendations about how to proceed and provide authoritative recommendations that reassure practitioners about the appropriateness of their treatment policies. Guidelines based on a critical appraisal of the scientific evidence clarify which interventions are based on proven benefit and document the quality of the supporting data. Furthermore, they alert clinicians to those interventions that are unsupported by good science, reinforce the importance and methods of critical appraisal and call attention to those practices that are ineffective, dangerous and wasteful.