Putting evidence-based clinical practice guidelines into practice: an academic pediatric center's experience.
BACKGROUND
Clinical practice guidelines can provide a much-needed interface between research and practice, pointing the way to higher quality, evidence-based, and more cost-effective care. Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center developed a formal process for the production of 29 evidence-based guidelines and companion tools.
Clinical practice guidelines and their companion documents are developed by interprofessional teams that are led by community physicians and that include hospital-based physicians, nurses, other allied health professionals, and patients or parents. An education coordinator develops an education plan that outlines specific clinical practice changes and expected outcomes to be monitored. Guideline evidence is embedded into companion documents and processes available at the point of care. Electronic order sets for treatments and medications have been developed using available guidelines as sources of evidence. All guideline-based order sets include an automatic order for use of the associated clinical pathway. It is important to create and maintain an evidence-based environment in an academic medical center.


CONCLUSIONS
Keys to success include a rigorous methodology, tools that place the evidence in the hands of providers at the site of care, feedback on outcomes, and an environment that encourages evidence-based care.
Gerhardt
Wendy E
WE
Center for Professional Excellence, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, USA. wendy.gerhardt@cchmc.org
Schoettker
Pamela J
PJ
Donovan
Edward F
EF
Kotagal
Uma R
UR
Muething
Stephen E
SE
D000046:Academic Medical Centers; D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine / Q000379:methods*; D006751:Hospital Information Systems; D006776:Hospitals, Pediatric; D006801:Humans; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D016730:Program Development