Work

Guidelines and checklists for writing guidelines and checklists: lessons from evidence-based medicine

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is literature-based medicine. The essence of EBM is ensuring that research is adequately reported in the literature, not only to help readers determine whether the research is sound but also to ascertain that it can be applied appropriately to specific patients and conditions. This need to document clinical research gave rise to the standards-reporting movement in medicine, the first and best-known standard being the 1996 CONSORT statement for reporting rand-omized controlled trials. Guidelines and checklists are widely used to augment mem-ory, improve quality and consistency, ensure thoroughness and efficiency, structure repetitive tasks, and to reduce errors, omissions, ambiguities, and misunderstandings. These characteristics make them ideal for reporting the designs, activities, and results of medical research. In fact, EBM is built around developing and using guidelines and checklists. As an early participant in the clinical guideline movement, I learned a lot about how and how not to prepare guidelines. I describe my lessons here.

Source: European Science Editing

DOI: 10.3897/ese.2025.e151746

Author: Tom Lang

Institutions: West China Medical Center of Sichuan University, University of Chicago

Language: English

Topic: Clinical practice guidelines implementation

Subfield: Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

Field: Medicine

Domain: Health Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: diamond

Funder: Research Councils UK