Results (
Thai) 2:
[Copy]Copied!
In short, the evaluation of clinical practice guidelines has six components:
• an assessment of guideline dissemination;
• an assessment of whether or not clinical practice is moving towards the guidelines’ recommendations;
• an assessment of whether or not health outcomes have changed;
• an assessment of whether or not the guidelines have contributed to any changes in clinical practice or health outcomes;
• an assessment of the guidelines’ impact on consumers’ knowledge and understanding; and
• an economic evaluation of the guideline process.
Groups involved in guideline development and implementation will be required to evaluate at least some of these components, but it is unlikely that an individual group would evaluate all six. In the following sections the components are examined in turn, with changes in clinical practice and health outcomes considered together. Guideline developers will also be required to produce a report on the evaluation process.
5.1.1 Evaluation of dissemination
Evaluation of guideline dissemination is very common and relatively straightforward.
How many copies of the guidelines have been requested? How many copies of the guidelines have been mailed out? Of those that were disseminated, how many have been received? opened? read in part? read in full? understood?
How many posters were sent out? How many were displayed in appropriate and prominent places? How many articles have been published, or interviews broadcast, about the guidelines? How many consumer inquiries have there been?
These criteria can be used for assessing whether or not a dissemination strategy has achieved its goals. An indication of the response rates that might be expected can be obtained from the marketing literature.
5.1.2 Evaluation of changes in clinical practice and health outcomes
Ideally, guideline developers would have had access to a national data set that provided evidence of the need for clinical practice guidelines and baseline information for evaluation purposes. The guideline developers themselves may also have collected relevant data, ideally concerned with both clinical practice and health outcomes.
Being translated, please wait..