© 2002 Archives of Disease in Childhood
LEADING ARTICLE
Law
Do guidelines have legal implications?
Centre for Health Law, Nottingham Law School, The Nottingham Trent University, UK
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Mr J H Tingle, Director of the Centre for Health Law, Nottingham Law School, The Nottingham Trent University, NG1 4BU, UK
Clinical guideline use is increasing
Keywords: clinical guideline; legal
Clinical guidelines are becoming an increasingly common feature of the health care environment in the UK, with health organisations such as the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE), Royal medical colleges, and the universities regularly developing clinical guidelines. The development rate of clinical guidelines has even been termed a "flood" in the area of general medical practice.1
Health quality enhancement activity by clinical guidelines has been given a clear boost by government calls for an end to unacceptable regional variations of care and the concept of evidence based care. Clinical guidelines also sit well with other government health care quality enhancement activities such as clinical governance and clinical risk management. The central argument that can be advanced is that, as a matter of sound common sense, if best, reflective, evidence based practice is put into effect, the incidence of untoward incidents must be reduced. Risks can also be more
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Arch. Dis. Child. 2002 86: 387.
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