Evidence-based medicine, guidelines, personality types, relatives and absolutes

There is an epidemic of guidelines but very little evidence-based information has been assembled to tell us exactly how guidelines are best implemented. Guidelines, although very valuable, are essentially a reductionistic attempt to simplify the complexities of medicine. Clinicians may appreciate that each guideline should be prefaced by a statement that 'what follows may not be applicable to all patients' but there seems little doubt that guideline adherence will be used to assess quality of care by those unfamiliar with the complexities.