BMJ 1995;311:1517-1518 (9 December)

Editorials

Clinical guidelines and the law

What is the legal status of guidelines?

Fifty years ago the regius professor of physic at the University of Cambridge wrote in praise of medicine that its satisfaction lay "in the personal and individual character of its practice: the latitude with which a qualified doctor may exercise his own judgment, express his own opinions and practise his own art."1 In the same year (1946) the BMA, sensing a threat to this latitude from proposals to establish a national health service, declared that "the medical profession should remain free to exercise the art and science of medicine according to its traditions, standards and knowledge . . . without interference."2

Yet clinical practice is now governed by a vast array of regulations in the form of protocols, practice policies, clinical guidelines, and codes of practice. Their current ascendancy is not simply due to state intervention. It reflects a change in the balance . . . [Full text of this article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

Clinical guidelines may obviate need for thought
Dominic Heaney
BMJ 1996 312: 706. [Extract] [Full Text]

This article has been cited by other articles:

  • Malone, M., Harris, R., Hooker, R., Tucker, T., Tanna, N., Honnor, S. (2004). Health and the Internet--changing boundaries in primary care. Fam Pract 21: 189-191 [Abstract] [Full text]  
  • (1997). Attributes of ATS documents that guide clinical practice. Recommendations of the ATS Clinical Practice Committee. Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med. 156: 2015-2025 [Full text]  
  • Weber, J N, Taylor, G P (1996). Antenatal screening is important. BMJ 312: 706-706 [Full text]  
Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ