[Clinical pathways--practical aid for the physician? Example: clarification of the suspicion of tuberculosis]

Guidelines, clinical pathways and clinical algorithms are popular instruments nowadays to ensure quality as well as the economic efficiency of medical work. These terms themselves, however, are frequently defined only in a diffuse way. Thus, medical standard procedures often complicate clinical workflows more than to facilitate decision making in everyday life. In our department, feasible standardized approaches have been generated in the form of structured text documents, which on the one hand can aid clinical decision making at the bedside and on the other hand serve as medical sketches for the generation of operational treatment paths on an interdisciplinary level. Structure and content of such an instructional text are exemplified here using our standardized document for the diagnostic approach when tuberculosis is suspected.