Criteria for trustworthy clinical practice guidelines

Standard	Comments
1. Transparency	Guidelines should include an explicit description of process and funding.
2. Conflict of interest	Conflicts of interest for the guidelines development group should be managed by reporting, exclusion, and divestments.
3. Members of the guidelines development group	The group should be multidisciplinary and balanced.
4. Review of the literature	The guideline should be based on systematic reviews of the literature.
5. Rating strength of evidence and recommendations	Each recommendation should be accompanied by the underlying reasoning, potential benefits and harms, the evidence and its quality, the contribution of values and experience, rating of the level of confidence in the evidence and the strength of the recommendation, and differences of opinion regarding recommendations.
6. Presentation of recommendations	The guideline should state precisely the recommended actions, when they should be performed, and how they could be measured for evaluation of compliance.
7. External review	The guidelines should be reviewed by the full spectrum of relevant stakeholders. The general public should have an opportunity to review the guidelines before they are final.
8. Updating	Guidelines should state date of publication and evidence review and be updated when new, clinically-important evidence is available.

Clinical_practice_guidelines.htm

Based on data from the consensus report: Clinical Practice Guidelines We Can Trust. Institute of Medicine of The National Academies. Report available at: http://nationalacademies.org/hmd/Reports/2011/Clinical-Practice-Guidelines-We-Can-Trust.aspx.

Graphic 68090 Version 4.0