Guidelines are utilised by the full range of healthcare professionals and students to shape their medical practice. In particular, healthcare professionals and trainees are frequently faced with the challenge of identifying and selecting appropriate patient management strategies.  To the extent that healthcare professionals and students are guideline consumers, it is important for them to be able to identify high quality guidelines that have been developed using widely accepted methodology; appropriately implement the recommendations contained within these; and understand the limitations of guidelines.

Patients and other interested parties without a background in healthcare (i.e., family members of affected patients, administrators of support groups, policy makers, media, etc.) may also benefit from learning more about guidelines, including how they are created, how to interpret them, and their limitations.

Aims & Objectives

The mission of the GIME Working Group is to provide clinicians, healthcare students, and patients with educational materials to help them better understand how guidelines are created and how guidelines are used.  This Working Group has a mission distinct from that of the International Guideline Development Credentialing & Certification (INGUIDE) Program, as the latter is intended to train healthcare professionals to facilitate the development of guidelines (or to train others to do so), while the Guidelines in Medical Education Working Group aims to educate clinicians and patients on how to use guidelines, not to create them.  This Working Group is thus for guideline consumers, not guideline developers.

The group aims to:

  • Develop a network of guideline experts interested in furthering educational opportunities for guideline consumers, including healthcare professionals, patients, and others.
  • Identify educational gaps (i.e., through qualitative and cross-sectional research) that exist amongst healthcare professionals, trainees, patients, other constituencies, and the general public regarding guideline evaluation, utilisation, and application.
  • Develop educational and training materials and opportunities (e.g., webinars, handbooks, multi-level courses, mentorship opportunities) regarding critical guideline evaluation
  • Develop educational and training opportunities regarding best practices in applying guidelines
  • Adapt written and other educational materials for different constituencies (e.g., undergraduate students, medical students, other health professional students, practicing health professionals, patients, and others).
  • Encourage the expansion of formal coursework in the interpretation and use of clinical practice guidelines for medical students and other health profession students.
  • Form an advisory group comprised of representatives of different types of guidelines consumers.
  • Contact semi-governmental and governmental organisations active in the oversight of graduate medical education to see if they would like to jointly develop educational materials or guidelines pertaining to medical education.

Chair:
Murad Alam

If you are a GIN member and are interested in joining this Working Group, please email membership_manager@g-i-n.net.