Procedures for Using Clinical Practice Guidelines

Abstract

This article provides information about clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) to facilitate their application to the practice of speech-language pathology. CPGs are sets of recommendations based on evidence, including expert clinical opinion, that have been developed by a panel of reviewers. In this article, CPGs are defined and their components and rationale for use are discussed. A guide for analyzing CPGs critically and recommendations for applying them to clinical practice are also described. Two of the authors and 1 graduate student in speech-language pathology independently evaluated a CPG from the early intervention literature using the guide described in the article. An illustrative evaluation of a CPG is presented to facilitate application of the proposed critiquing guide. The guide was revealed to have high interrater reliability. However, analysis of the raters' responses to the individual items revealed problems with 3 items. The authors present possible resolutions and/or explanations for the problems. By using the proposed guide, speech-language pathologists can increase their application of research to clinical practice, thereby enhancing their skills in informed clinical decision making.