How to Develop, Update and Adapt Clinical Practice Guideline: A Comprehensive Application Package

The main purpose of guidelines is to improve patient care, and if properly developed, will lead to improving the quality and quantity of health services. Most clinical guidelines don`t meet the necessary standards, so this study was commissioned by the relevant ministry with the aim of preparing an application package for designing medical guidelines.

This development research plan was conducted in 2020 in four stages; Searching and collecting scientific resources, collecting experts opinions in the field of guideline standards by qualitative method, analyzing texts and classifying information, final design package compilation. The content validity of the proposal forms and their instructions were obtained by calculating the CVI and CVR.

In this study, 13 knowledge products including design request process flowchart, checklist for necessity and type of guideline, pre-proposal, proposal of developing, updating and adapting of clinical practice guidelines and instructions for completing them, conflict of interest form, Guideline design progress report submission forms were prepared. The initial proposal form was also designed in 13 sections using scientific sources. The necessity CVR = (99%), clarity and applicability of the prepared forms and instructions were confirmed. The overall CVI index was 0.97.

The prepared package, is simple, practical, contains the necessary standards for developing/ updating/ adapting the guidelines, as well as in accordance with the requirements and structure of health status in the country. Therefore, it is suggested that a strategy be designed to institutionalize the process and informative products provided by the education system and the executive department of services.