Objectives: Users of clinical practice guidelines and other recommendations need to know how much confidence they can place in recommendations. Guideline developers currently use varying approaches to grading the quality of evidence and recommendations leading to confusion among guideline developers and users. We propose to hold a workshop to inform reviewers and guideline developers about the GRADE approach. At the end of the workshop users will have learned why the GRADE system for guiding the complex judgments involved in grading evidence and recommendations balances the need for simplicity with the need for full and transparent consideration of all important issues.

Description: Individuals from international organizations and academic institutions formed the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) working group and held 12 meetings and several workshops over a period of 4 years. The GRADE working group developed a system and accompanying software (visual studio .net and HTML help control version 5.2) for grading the quality of evidence and the strength of recommendations that guideline developers can apply across a wide range of interventions and contexts. Based on examples we will explain how users can apply the GRADE system. Participants will learn how judgments about the strength of a recommendation require consideration of the balance between benefits and harms, the quality of the evidence, translation of the evidence into specific circumstances, and the certainty of the baseline risk. We will highlight why it is also important to consider costs (resource utilisation) before making a recommendation.
This will be an interactive workshop based on examples following a brief introduction about the GRADE system. The software application (GRADEpro) will facilitate the development of an example guideline based on the GRADE system.

Target audience: Review authors, consumers, guideline developers and methodologists.

Style: Demonstration and training workshop