There are several standardized methods for developing guidelines in the field of best-practices-psychologychotherapy and social care, all of which have core steps in common. The method developed by the Institut national d’excellence en santé et en services sociaux (INESSS) (2011) is outlined below.
Step 1: Decide to develop a guideline
- Analyze the problem: What is the purpose of developing the practice guideline? What are the target intervention settings & stakeholders? What is the current practice/intervention being used and can a newly developed guideline improve it? What are the current available budgets, regulations and service organization? How will the guideline adapt to current practices of stakeholders who are driven by knowledge and experience?
- Define the main question(s) and aims: Is the guideline dealing with a particular approach? Specific client group or community?
- Determine the relevance and feasibility of developing a practice guideline: Is the guideline the most efficient strategy in the current or future situation? Are there enough human and financial sources to implement the guideline?
- Request to a developer: Requesters who defined the need and decided that a guideline should be developed will interact with a guideline developer having the necessary expertise to do so.
Step 2: Collect and analyze the data
- Form and consult an expert panel: Consult a multidisciplinary panel of experts, with no conflict of interest, in order to develop a guideline while assessing its expected benefits, risks, and anticipated effects.
- Base guideline on different types of data:
- data drawn from scientific literature, which is often the foundation of the guideline
- contextual data, which includes subjective opinions and refers to different information specific to the intervention context
- expert knowledge, which helps answer specific questions such as the cost or acceptability of implementing a guideline, conditions for success, operational constraints, risks of an intervention, etc.
Step 3: Finalize the guideline and implement it in the field
- Convert the data into Practice Guideline: After synthesizing different types of data, the resulting data report must be adjusted to the different target clients and settings in order to develop a specific guideline.
- Use guideline implementation enablers: Use factors that enable guideline implementation such as
- planning an implementation strategy as soon as the decision is made to develop a practice guidelines
- planning to involve all stakeholders required to take ownership of the guideline
- taking into account community characteristics
- getting organizational approval
- planning training for intended users
- making sure that the objectives are realistic and that expected outcomes are measurable for evaluation purposes
- Choose practice guideline formats: The practice guidelines can be disseminated through various formats: video, pamphlet, mass emailing, Internet, etc.
- Implement guideline in the field: Implementation strategies that can be used include: forming work groups with institutional managers, offering staff training, holding seminars or conferences for practitioners and users, etc.
Other guideline development methods include those developed by the American Psychological Association (Hollon et al., 2014) and Ansari & Rashidian (2012).
Content last reviewed: Sept, 2020
