Appraisal of Clinical Practice Guidelines
Introduction
Think about a recent clinical experience. Be prepared to describe it briefly.
Assignment Guidelines
What clinical practice guidelines would have been helpful?
Search for a clinical practice guideline that you could have used in that experience.
Use a search engine to find a ‘guideline for’
Download and complete the Rapid Critical Appraisal of Evidence-Based Guidelines (Word) (Links to an external site.) to critique the quality of the guideline.
Would this guideline be useful in your practice?
Would the staff that you work with be receptive to using the clinical guideline on your unit?
Complete the critique form and add your answers to numbers 1, 3, and 4 at the end of the form. Answer these questions in full sentences
Add a Reference page
Submit your assignment in one Word document.
This assignment will be graded using the Appraisal of Clinical Practice Guidelines Rubric found in your syllabus.
Submit your completed Word document to the assignment link provided.
Sample Paper
Guideline Name: Non-Pharmacological and Pharmacological Management of Acute Pain from Non-Low Back, Musculoskeletal Injuries in Adults, 2020.
Student Name .
Critical Appraisal of a Clinical Practice Guideline
CREDIBILITY
- Who were the guideline developers? American College of Physicians (ACP) & American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP).
- Were the developers representative of key stakeholders in this specialty (interdisciplinary)? Yes No Unknown
- Who funded the guideline development? American College of Physicians (ACP)
- Were any of the guidelines developers funded researchers of the reviewed studies? Yes No Unknown
- Did the team have a valid development strategy? Yes No Unknown
- Was an explicit, sensible, and impartial process used to identify, select, and combine evidence? Yes No Unknown
- Did its developers carry out a comprehensive, reproducible literature review within the past 12 months of its publication/revision?
- Yes No Unknown
- Were all important options and outcomes considered?
- Yes No Unknown
- Is each recommendation in the guideline tagged by the level/strength of evidence upon which it is based and linked with the scientific evidence? Yes No Unknown
- Do the guidelines make explicit recommendations (reflecting value judgments about outcomes)? Yes No Unknown
- Has the guideline been subjected to peer review and testing? Yes No Unknown
APPLICABILITY/GENERALIZABILITY
- Is the intent of use provided (e.g. national, regional, local)? Yes No Unknown
13) Are the recommendations clinically relevant? Yes No Unknown
14) Will the recommendations help me in caring for my patients? Yes No Unknown
- Are the recommendations practical/feasible
(e.g., resources – people and equipment- available)? Yes No Unknown
16) Are the recommendations a major variation from current practice? Yes No Unknown
17) Can the outcomes be measured through standard care? Yes No Unknown
Q1. Clinical experience
A recent clinical experience that I encountered was when a patient presented to the clinic complaining about a sharp pain in the back that worsened with movement especially bending. On further investigation, I found out that the patient works in the construction industry, where he regularly lifts heavyweights, most of the time. The pain had started four days before he finally decided to seek medical help. The patient stated that he had experienced several episodes of back pain before, and they always resolved by taking a break from work and using over-the-counter painkillers. However, the pain did not resolve this time, even after taking a full day’s rest. He stated that pain was worsening even with rest. The most likely diagnosis for this patient was Muscle or ligament strain due to his work history (Busse et al., 2020).
Q2. Using the guideline in practice.
The guideline would help manage the symptoms exhibited by the patient. The guideline is meant to provide instruction on managing acute pain caused by non-low back, musculoskeletal injuries among outpatients. The guideline recommends using topical nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs as the first line of therapy to manage pain. After that, if the symptoms do not resolve, the care provider should initiate oral NSAIDs and specific acupressure or transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation to manage the symptoms. However, it discourages the use do opioids (Qaseem et al., 2020).
Q3. Using the guideline in the unit.
The staff members would be receptive to using the guideline since it is clear and straightforward to implement. The first and second recommendation do not require any special skills or technologies and would therefore be easy to implement.
References
Busse, J. W., Sadeghirad, B., Oparin, Y., Chen, E., Goshua, A., May, C., … & Guyatt, G. H. (2020). Management of acute pain from non–low back, musculoskeletal injuries: a systematic review and network meta-analysis of randomized trials. Annals of internal medicine, 173(9), 730-738. https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/full/10.7326/M19-3601
Qaseem, A., McLean, R. M., O’Gurek, D., Batur, P., Lin, K., Kansagara, D. L., & Clinical Guidelines Committee of the American College of Physicians and the Commission on Health of the Public and Science of the American Academy of Family Physicians*. (2020). Nonpharmacologic and pharmacologic management of acute pain from non–low back, musculoskeletal injuries in adults: A clinical guideline from the American College of Physicians and American Academy of Family Physicians. Annals of internal medicine, 173(9), 739-748. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32805126/
