Endorsement of clinical practice guidelines: Criteria from the College of Family Physicians of Canada

A scoping review of evidence-based guidance and guidelines published by general practice professional organizations

BACKGROUND

General practitioners (GPs) need robust, up-to-date evidence to deliver high-quality patient care. There is limited literature regarding the role of international GP professional organizations in developing and publishing clinical guidelines to support GPs clinical decision making.

OBJECTIVE

To identify evidence-based guidance and clinical guidelines produced by GP professional organizations and summarize their content, structure, and methods of development and dissemination.

METHODS

Scoping review of GP professional organizations following Joanna Briggs Institute guidance. Four databases were searched and a grey literature search was conducted. Studies were included if they were: (i) evidence-based guidance documents or clinical guidelines produced de novo by a national GP professional organization, (ii) developed to support GPs clinical care, and (iii) published in the last 10 years. GP professional organizations were contacted to provide supplementary information. A narrative synthesis was performed.

RESULTS

Six GP professional organizations and 60 guidelines were included. The most common de novo guideline topics were mental health, cardiovascular disease, neurology, pregnancy and women's health and preventive care. All guidelines were developed using a standard evidence-synthesis method. All included documents were disseminated through downloadable pdfs and peer review publications. GP professional organizations indicated that they generally collaborate with or endorse guidelines developed by national or international guideline producing bodies.

CONCLUSION

The findings of this scoping review provide an overview of de novo guideline development by GP professional organizations and can support collaboration between GP organizations worldwide thus reducing duplication of effort, facilitating reproducibility, and identifying areas of standardization.

PROTOCOL REGISTRATION

Open Science Framework: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/JXQ26.

A scoping review protocol of evidence-based guidance and guidelines published by general practitioner professional organisations

Introduction: General practitioners (GPs) strive to use a patient centered approach to achieve shared decision making by integrating clinical evidence, clinical judgement, and patient priorities. In order to achieve this standard of care, GPs require relevant, up to date and high quality evidence. Currently there is a gap in the literature regarding the role of GP professional organisations internationally in producing and publishing evidence based guidance and clinical guidelines for GPs. This protocol outlines a scoping review to identify what evidence-based guidance is produced by general practitioner professional organisations internationally in terms of topic content, the structure and methods used to develop guidance and ways of disseminating this guidance, to support general practice clinical decision making. Methods: This scoping review will be conducted using the framework proposed by the Joanna Briggs Institute and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis extension for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR), will be used to guide the reporting. Two researchers will search electronic databases (Medline, Embase, Cochrane Library and Scopus), grey literature sources and contact international GP professional organisations directly to identify appropriate studies for inclusion. Key information will be categorised and classified to generate a summary of the methods used internationally to develop and implement evidence-based guides for general practitioners and a narrative synthesis will be conducted. Conclusions: This scoping review will examine current practice internationally regarding the role of General Practice professional organisations in producing and publishing clinical guidelines and evidence based guidance to support general practitioner's clinical decision making to benefit patient care.