Clinical guidelines: an industry for growth

This paper looks at the development of clinical guidelines in the health service. The main thrust towards the development of guidelines has come from the seeming desperation over the profileration of locally produced quality standards emanating from virtually every clinical area over the past few years. While the involvement of staff at grass-roots level is to be welcomed in setting goals, how much of the work that they produce in standard-setting amounts to paper exercises, and how far can their standards be said to reflect the state of knowledge at the cutting edge? How far are they simply statements describing existing, perhaps even poor, practice? The movement towards clinical guidelines is an attempt to codify best practice and ensure that it relates to the latest valid research. This article looks at an initiative that will go some way towards retaining clinical involvement in standard-setting while ensuring that these will meet the requirement that they reflect, as far as possible, the latest research.