Rapid Responses to:

LETTERS: John Wilding, Gareth Williams, Garfield Drummond, Tom Marshall, Andrew Rouse, John Eisenberg, Angela Hey, Tahseen A Chowdhury, Hogne Sandvik, Michael Stewart, N J Sharvill, Bruce M Psaty, Curt D Furberg, Lawrence E Ramsay, Bryan Williams, John F Potter, G Dennis Johnston, Graham A MacGregor, Lucilla Poston, Neil R Poulter, and Gavin Russell Management of hypertension BMJ 2000; 320: 576 [Full text]

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Guidelines are unlikely to be implemented

Phil Taylor   (8 March 2000)

Guidelines are unlikely to be implemented 8 March 2000
Phil Taylor, GP and Clinical Governance Specialist St Thomas Court Axminster Send response to journal: Re: Guidelines are unlikely to be implemented	I read the letters in response to the British Hypertension Society guidelines with a wry smile and wasn't at all surprised by the author's reply. This contains a mixture of some valid points, some condescension but most importantly a failure to recognise that if a group of hospital doctors write guidelines intended for general practitioners which contain an explicit but arbitrary value judgement such as a ten year risk threshold of 15% then evidence about the effectiveness of guidelines suggests that they will not be successfully implemented. Should not the BMJ adopt a policy of requiring guidelines written for implementation by general practitioners to at least include a general practitioner in the authorship ? Should they not also be reviewed by an expert on guidelines ? Phil Taylor Clinical Governance Specialist to East Devon PCG General Practitioner, St Thomas Court, Axminster EX13 5AG