Methodologic standards for the development of clinical decision rules in emergency medicine.
The purpose of this review is to present a guide to help readers critically appraise the methodologic quality of an article or articles describing a clinical decision rule. This guide will also be useful to clinical researchers who wish to answer 1 or more questions detailed in this article. We consider the 6 major stages in the development and testing of a new clinical decision rule and discuss a number of standards within each stage. We use examples from emergency medicine and, in particular, examples from our own research on clinical decisions rules for radiography in trauma.
Stiell
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Division of Emergency Medicine, Departments of Medicine, Epidemiology and Community Medicine, Ottawa Hospital Loeb Health Research Institute, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Wells
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D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D003661:Decision Support Techniques; D004635:Emergency Medicine; D006801:Humans; D012106:Research