Many guideline producers are starting to produce versions of their guidelines meant for patients, carers and the public. We worked with members of the public, patients, carers, people who are professional communicators of health information (e.g. journalists), guideline producers and others to find out what the public knew about guidelines, what they wanted from patient versions of guidelines and how to present information in those patient versions. In a collaboration with the Guidelines International Network (G-I-N), most of our work has been summarised in Chapter 7 of the G-I-N Public Toolkit.
Supporting materials:
Toolkit
- The G-I-N Public Toolkit (http://www.g-i-n.net/working-groups/gin-public/toolkit).
Example guidelines using DECIDE strategies
- A patient version of a guideline produced by the Scottish Dental Clinical Effectiveness Programme (SDCEP) that uses DECIDE strategies is available at http://www.sdcep.org.uk/published-guidance/periodontal-management/. The Scottish Intercollegiate Guideline Network glaucoma guideline that also uses DECIDE strategies is available at http://sign.ac.uk/guidelines/fulltext/144/index.html.
Publications
- What do patients and the public know about clinical practice guidelines and what do they want from them? A qualitative study (https://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12913-016-1319-4).
- Improving the user experience of patient versions of clinical guidelines: user testing of a Scottish Intercollegiate Guideline Network (SIGN) patient version (http://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12913-016-1287-8).
- Patients, health information, and guidelines: A focus-group study (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3109/02813432.2015.1067517).
- Patient and public attitudes to and awareness of clinical practice guidelines: a systematic review with thematic and narrative syntheses (http://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1472-6963-14-321).
- Patient information for better health outcomes in primary care (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3109/02813432.2011.574863).
- Dissemination of clinical practice guidelines: A content analysis of patient versions (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27091380).