Guidelines in psychiatry.
BACKGROUND
guidelines are important to the effective implementation of modern psychiatry.


METHODS
review Article, using various sources.


RESULTS
the writer's own experience of drafting guidelines is drawn upon, while pubmed articles have been searched on how to implement guidelines.


CONCLUSIONS
the utility of guidelines are discussed and the relationship of guidelines to audit is explained.


CONCLUSIONS
guidelines need to be effectively researched in order to have credibility; they need to be properly implemented in order to achieve desired improvement in practice and their implementation needs to be audited.
South Essex Partnership University Foundation NHS Trust, UK. ma393@cam.ac.uk
Mark
M
Agius
D019983:Guideline Adherence / Q000592:standards; D006284:Health Plan Implementation / Q000592:standards; D006801:Humans; D008485:Medical Audit / Q000592:standards; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic / Q000592:standards*; D011570:Psychiatry / Q000592:standards*; D019984:Quality Indicators, Health Care / Q000592:standards; D013222:State Medicine / Q000592:standards*; D006113:United Kingdom