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Evidence-Based Medicine: Practice Guidelines

What are Practice Guidelines?

"A set of recommendations defining conditions for using or not using available interventions in clinical or public health practice. Practice guidelines may be evidence-based and referred to as evidence-based guidelines or evidence-based recommendations." (Riegelman, R.K. (2005). Studying a study & testing a test: How to read the medical evidence. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.)

In other words, practice guidelines are sets of evidence-based, systematically developed recommendations for health care.

Practice Guideline Resources

"Clinical practice guidelines are state­ments that include recommendations intended to optimize patient care that are informed by a systematic review of evidence and an assessment of the benefits and harms of alternative care options" (AAFP Clinical Practice Guideline Manual).  

Appraising Practice Guidelines

Practice Guidelines in PubMed

Searches in PubMed can be limited to display only Practice Guidelines. Access PubMed@Himmelfarb. After performing a search in PubMed, under MY NCBI FILTERS, select "Practice Guidelines". You should now see that your results list is much shorter and restricted to Practice Guidelines only.

Use the MyNCBI filters: Practice Guidelines to limit PubMed search results to practice guideline articles.

Practice Guidelines in MEDLINE

Searches in Ovid MEDLINE can also be limited to display only Practice Guidelines. On the main search screen under Limits, scroll to "Practice Guidelines" in the Publication Types. Select this from the list and then proceed with your search.

Select Practice Guideline under Publication Types to filter for Practice Guideline articles in Ovid MEDLINE.