Information about where and how to search for clinical guidelines, SOPs and protocols
Contents:
- NHSGGC guidelines
- National guidelines
- How to search for guidelines
NHSGGC guidelines
Clinical guidelines:
The Clinical Guideline Directory was developed to support the implementation of the NHSGGC Clinical Guideline Framework, providing a central location for staff to access clinical guidelines developed and approved for use within NHSGGC.
Clinical guidelines, SOPs, protocols and other information to support staff working with children and young people within NHSGGC. Also available as an app.
West of Scotland Cancer Network Guidelines & Protocols
This intranet site is available to all NHS Staff across the West of Scotland and provides a single point of access to regional prescribing documentation, including Systemic Anti Cancer Therapy (SACT) Protocols and approved Clinical Management Guidelines (CMGs). Accessible from NHS networked devices only.
Palliative Care Guidelines, Policies, Protocols
Two Staffnet pages contain information, resources and links relevant to palliative care within NHSGGC. Accessible from NHS networked devices only:
- Palliative Care Resource Folder (Adult Services)
- Palliative Care Resource Folder (Neonatal & Children's Services)
Prescribing guidance:
GGC Medicines has been designed as a tool to assist in promoting high quality, safe and cost-effective prescribing within the Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Board. The website has useful resources for prescribers and patients including:
- The GGC Adult Medicines Formulary as a searchable or navigational database
- The Adult Therapeutics Handbook: an essential resource for junior medical staff working in NHSGGC
- Current prescribing and clinical information via the Medicines Update suite of publications
- Shared Care Protocols
- Information for patients on access to medicines
- Policies relating to medicines in NHSGGC
- Other formularies
This information is also available as an app. You will need a password to install the app which is available on Sharepoint here.
Adult Intravenous Medicines Monographs
This site contains 83 monographs that are intended to provide a simple and straightforward source of information to assist with the preparation and administration of intravenous medicines by practitioners who hold a recognised certificate for IV medicine administration within NHS GGC. Accessible from Sharepoint using your NHSGGC M365 credentials.
Paediatric Intravenous Medicines Monographs
This site contains core monographs that are intended to provide a simple and straightforward source of information to assist with the preparation and administration of intravenous medicines by practitioners who hold a recognised certificate for IV medicine administration within NHS GGC. The information applies to the routine use of intravenous drugs in paediatric patients only. Accessible from Sharepoint using your NHSGGC M365 credentials.
National Guidelines:
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) provides national guidance and advice to improve health and social care.
The website includes:
- Clinical guidelines, reviewing the evidence across broad health & social care topics
- Technology appraisal guidance, reviewing the clinical and cost effectiveness of new treatments
- Diagnostic guidance, reviewing new diagnostic technologies for adoption in the NHS
- Highly specialisted technologies guidance, reviewing clinical and cost effectiveness of specialised treatments
- Interventional procedures guidance, reviewing the efficacy and safety of procedures
- Medical technologies guidance, reviewing new medical devices for adoption in the NHS
Scottish Intercollegiate Guideline Network (SIGN) guidelines are based on a systematic review of the scientific literature and are aimed at aiding the translation of new knowledge into action. The guidelines are intended to:
- help health and social care professionals and patients understand medical evidence and use it to make decisions about healthcare
- reduce unwarranted variations in practice and make sure patients get the best care available, no matter where they live
- improve healthcare across Scotland by focusing on patient-important outcomes.
Scottish Palliative Care Guidelines
The Scottish Palliative Care Guidelines reflect a consensus of opinion about good practice in the management of adult patients with life limiting illness. They are designed for healthcare professionals from any care setting who are involved in supporting people with a palliative life-limiting condition.
How to search for guidelines:
The go-to site for clinical guidelines used to be the National Guidelines Clearinghouse (www.guidelines.gov) which was maintained by the US Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality.
Unfortunately funding for this site ceased in July 2018 so we now have to use alternative sources.
Enter your search topic into the search box. You can also choose to carry out a more complex search by using the PICO or Advanced search options.
Use the filter options on the right hand side of the screen to limit your results to “Guidelines”.
You can further filter your results to:
- a specific country by selecting from the list
- or to “Regulatory Guidance”
- or to guidance published within a specific period (e.g. within the last year or 5 years)
GIN International Guidelines Library
The GIN (Guidelines International Network) international guideline library and registry of guidelines in development, powered by EBSCO, contains guidelines from across the globe in many languages, both published and in development.
ECRI Guidelines Trust is a publicly available, free, online repository of objective, evidence-based clinical practice guideline content. Its purpose is to provide up-to-date clinical practices to advance safe and effective patient care. This centralized repository includes evidence-based guidance developed by nationally and internationally recognized medical organizations and medical specialty societies and a link to the original full-text guideline on the developer’s website is included.
Both of these Point of Care resources list relevant clinical guidelines within their Evidence Summaries.
Search for your topic and then:
- BMJ Best Practice: Select “Guidelines” from under the “Resources” tab at the top of the page
- Dynamed: Select “Guidelines and Resources” from the contents list on the left hand side of the screen
Local guidelines from other NHS organisations
If you are looking for examples of local guidance/protocols from other NHS Boards or Trusts, you can try carrying out a Google search for your topic including the word “guideline” or “protocol” and then specify to Google that you want to only look at sites that end with .nhs.uk
For example:
“palliative care” AND (guideline OR protocol) site:.nhs.uk
This tells Google that you want to search for:
- The phrase palliative care (putting the words in inverted commas tells Google to treat this as a phrase)
- But only if the word guideline OR the word protocol is also present
- Only to look in websites with .nhs.uk in their address
Remember: this will not pick up any documents that are held on intranets or other places where access is restricted (e.g. password protected).
More information about searching for guidelines:
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