Background: The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) in the UK has a long-standing and well-respected national guideline development programme. In addition to developing its own national clinical guidelines, the RCN is host to the National Collaborating Centre for Nursing and Supportive Care (NCC-NSC) which is committed to a programme of work to develop clinical guidelines on behalf of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE). This poster, which is part 2 of a series of three, will examine how Cochrane reviews are used in guideline development.

Objectives: To demonstrate the use of Cochrane reviews in guideline development.

Methods: Cochrane reviews are important sources of evidence for Clinical Guidelines. However, as yet, Cochrane reviews do not cover all areas pertinent to guidelines, and if they do, the reviews may not answer exactly the same clinical questions as those posed by guideline development groups. The presentation will consider the practicalities of using Cochrane reviews in guideline development: whether reviews can be used directly, whether they need to be updated, what to do if there are no Cochrane reviews available and whether to include non-randomised evidence. A decision tree showing the various options is presented, and the process is illustrated using the RCN’s most recent guideline, Peri-operative fasting in adults and children. Finally we disuss whether Cochrane reviews and guideline development processes can be better co-ordinated to address important clinical questions.