Conflicting guidelines on same topics cause doctors confusion, say MPs

doi:10.1136/bmj.39395.679641.DB

BMJ 2007;335:1012 (17 November), doi:10.1136/bmj.39395.679641.DB

News

Conflicting guidelines on same topics cause doctors confusion, say MPs

Lisa Hitchen

London

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Clinicians in England and Wales are confused when differentsets of guidelines are published at the same time on the sametopic, a parliamentary committee heard at an inquiry into theNational Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).

Richard Taylor, MP, health select committee member, said thatfor two topics NICE and the Department of Health had recentlypublished recommendations one soon after the other. One wasabout venous thromboembolism and the other on the use of alcoholin pregnancy.

NICE's clinical guidelines on the prevention of venous thromboembolismin patients having orthopaedic surgery and the Department ofHealth's report of the independent expert working group on theprevention of venous thromboembolism in patients admitted tohospital were both published in April.

"What clinicians are bothered about is when they get two substantiallydifferent bits of advice," said Dr Taylor.

Michael Rawlins, chairman of NICE, said that the department's. . . [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

What should clinicians do when faced with conflicting recommendations?: Andrew D Oxman, Paul Glasziou, and John W Williams, Jr
BMJ 2008 337: a2530. [Extract] [Full Text]

This article has been cited by other articles:

Oxman, A. D, Glasziou, P., Williams, J. W Jr (2008). What should clinicians do when faced with conflicting recommendations?. BMJ 337: a2530-a2530 [Full text]