The Effect of Standards and Guidelines in Clinical Practice

According to the US Institute of Medicine (IOM), clinical guidelines are “statements that include recommendations intended to optimize patient care that are informed by a systematic review of evidence and an assessment of the benefits and harms of alternative care options.” Nowadays, clinical standards and guidelines, including those focused on transfusion medicine, are omnipresent in many healthcare systems. This chapter shows how these clinical standards and practice guidelines can enhance quality and clinical decision-making by simply translating scientific research into straightforward recommendations to improve patient outcomes. In general, clinical standards and guidelines can be used to provide evidence-based treatment recommendations, educate healthcare workers and patients, and assess the performance of healthcare professionals and organizations. If disseminated and implemented properly, they can enhance transfusion medicine practices to a great extent; however, this comes with many challenges including lack of methodological practices in some cases, difficulty reconciling conflicting guidelines, and conflicts of interest.