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Abstract
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- Age and Ageing welcomes publication of the new World Falls Guideline
- Evidence on the causes of falls and interventions to reduce risk can be difficult to interpret
- The new guideline synthesises evidence, expert opinion and consideration of context to produce practical advice
How do we decide what to advise the patients we see? How do organisations ensure that quality and efficiency are maintained? How do healthcare professionals defend themselves when criticised or accused of poor practice? Our education, experience and reading of research evidence can take us only so far. Learning rapidly becomes out of date. Experiences may be selective or inappropriately generalised. Research evidence is ever changing. No individual practitioner can keep abreast of all developments.
Instead, we look to guidelines. A clinical guideline is a systematically developed series of recommendations designed to assist decisions about appropriate health care for specific clinical circumstances [1, 2]. Guidelines should be based on evidence, but interpretation and implementation of that evidence require appreciation of its potential limitations and attention to context. Guidelines are developed by the World Health Organisation, government agencies, scholarly societies, advocacy groups and individual healthcare provider organisations. In some fields, we have multiple different guidelines, sometimes inconsistent with each other [3], and even reviews of guidelines [4]. Guidelines need authority, a sound scholarly basis and pragmatic clinical wisdom. And as new evidence emerges, they constantly need renewing …
Language: en |