A series of evidence-based guidelines for clinical management
Why concise guidelines?
There are over 800 clinical guidelines applicable to UK practice, that cover many aspects of physician medicine. However, the majority are lengthy documents that are not easily accessible to the busy healthcare professional who needs to make an informed decision quickly, often within minutes and with confidence. It has been noted that despite the abundance of clinical guidelines on common diseases, there is a lack of clinical guidance for less common disorders. Guidelines are developed wherever possible on synthesis of the best available evidence and expert consensus gathered from practice clinicians and service users. A key feature of the series is to provide both recommendations for best practice, and where possible the practical tools with which to implement it.
The aims of the Concise Guidance to Good Practice Series are to produce concise guidelines on treatment areas that are:
- Discrete (2500 words)
- adding value to the wealth of guidelines already in existence
- Of general relevance to more than one subspeciality
- A clear opportunity for improving patient care.
- designed to clarify areas of uncertainty, as evidenced by a wide variation in practice.
Where are the concise guidelines published?
To ensure optimum dissemination to the health service the Clinical Standards Department, under the auspices of the Clinical Effectiveness Forum has secured ‘slots' in Clinical Medicine, The Journal of the Royal College of Physicians, for six concise guidelines to be published a year. Clinical Medicine has a circulation of 20,000, well exceeding all other specialist journals. As well as being published in Clinical Medicine, concise guidelines will also be produced as stand alone printed booklets which will be posted on the RCP website.
What concise guidelines have been published so far in this series and who has developed them?
What subjects are proposed for concise guidelines in the future?
- HIV testing for patients attending general medical services (UPDATE)
What are the steps to developing quality concise guidelines documents?
The document below, ‘Notes on rationale, methodology and development', can be downloaded and contains information on the development methodology of the Concise Guidelines to Good Practice Series and also includes instructions to authors.
Notes on rationale, methodology and development of concise guidelines (PDF 219 kb opens in new window)
How can I submit a proposal for contribution to the concise guidelines series?
A submission template for proposals is available below; only proposals submitted using this template will be considered. Submissions will be reviewed by an editorial sub-group of the Clinical Effectiveness Forum, who will reach a decision within 3 months of the submission. Completed submission templates should be sent electronically to clinical.standards@rcplondon.ac.uk.
Submission template (Word 145kb opens in new window)
Series Editors:
Professor Lynne Turner-Stokes FRCP
Dr Bernard Higgins FRCP
For further information contact: clinical.standards@rcplondon.ac.uk