A survey on the methodology of nursing clinical practice guidelines in the National Guideline Clearinghouse

Article type
Authors
Sun Y1, Chen J1, Bu Y1, Yu L2, Wang B2, Tian J1
1School of Nursing, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Evidence-based Medicine Center, Lanzhou University
2Department of Nursing, Rehabilitation Center Hospital of Gansu Province
Abstract
Objectives:
To analyze the current status of the methodology used in nursing clinical practice guidelines in the National Guideline Clearinghouse (NGC), in order to provide suggestions for researchers to develop and apply.

Methods:
We searched the NGC website for nursing clinical practice guidelines. We extracted basic information and the methodology used, using Excel to arrange the information and STATA 12.0 software to analyze the related data.

Results:
We included 268 nursing clinical practice guidelines. Most were developed by medical associations and the main users were nurses and doctors. Two hundred and sixty clinical nursing guidelines (97%) were based on systematic reviews, 246 (92%) assessed quality using some index and 264 (98%) gave suggestions based on expert consensus.

Conclusions:
In the future, nursing clinical practice guidelines incorporated by the NGC should be improved in terms of their selection/collection of evidence, assessment of grading of recommendations and practice recommendations.