Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Oct;8(8):851-864.
doi: 10.1177/2050640620950854. Epub 2020 Sep 2.

UEG framework for the development of high-quality clinical guidelines

Doron Boltin  1 , Doenja Mj Lambregts  2 , Fiona Jones  3 , Matan Siterman  1 , Stefanos Bonovas  4 , Markus Cornberg  5 , Wafaa Khannoussi  6 , Glen Doherty  3 ; Quality of Care Taskforce, UEG
Affiliations

UEG framework for the development of high-quality clinical guidelines

Doron Boltin et al. United European Gastroenterol J. 2020 Oct.

Abstract

The 48 national member societies and 17 specialist member societies which operate under the umbrella of United European Gastroenterology (UEG) increasingly develop clinical practice guidelines for both national and international implementation. The methodologies and strategies used in these guidelines vary considerably. The UEG Quality of Care Taskforce aimed to provide a framework for quality guidelines in order to assist member societies in the process of developing guidelines, and to provide a tool for readers of guidelines to critically appraise their quality. We outline the steps necessary to begin the guideline development process, how to build working groups, how to search for evidence, how to grade the quality of the evidence, how to reach consensus on statements and how to write the guideline document. We believe that using this framework will increase the potential to produce a high-quality guideline which is transparent, independent, reproducible and implementable.

Keywords: UEG; clinical practice guideline; evidence; quality of care; recommendation.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Schematic overview of guideline development process.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Structure of the guideline working groups.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Searching for evidence.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
GRADE approach to assessing level of evidence.
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
Methodology for reaching consensus.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Laine C, Taichman DB, Mulrow C. Trustworthy clinical guidelines. Ann Intern Med 2011; 154: 774–775. - PubMed
    1. Martinez Garcia L, Sanabria AJ, Araya I, et al. Efficiency of pragmatic search strategies to update clinical guidelines recommendations. BMC Med Res Methodol 2015; 15: 57. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Shekelle PG. Updating practice guidelines. JAMA 2014; 311: 2072–2073. - PubMed
    1. National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. The guidelines manual. London: National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, www.nice.org.uk (2012, accessed 11 March 2020).
    1. Brouwers MC, Kerkvliet K, Spithoff K, et al. The AGREE reporting checklist: a tool to improve reporting of clinical practice guidelines. BMJ 2016; 352: i1152. - PMC - PubMed

MeSH terms