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Belief, Criticism, and Probability

John H. Powers, MD

Arch Intern Med. 2011;171(1):15-17. doi:10.1001/archinternmed.2010.453

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Every day, health care providers aid patients in making decisions about their health. The process by which providers acquire, assimilate, and implement information to make decisions involves evaluation of published clinical research studies and reliance on early medical training, discussions with colleagues, local policies, personal clinical experience, and external influences.¹ Another important source of information is practice guidelines developed and published by professional medical societies.

Guidelines can serve a useful purpose for providers by presenting a compilation of available evidence in a given therapeutic area. Guidelines can also help the provision of care, because standardization may help streamline processes for implementation of interventions. In some circumstances, quasi-experimental studies show an association between following recommendations in guidelines and improved outcomes for patients.

However, guidelines are not just summaries of the evidence. They are also interpretations of that evidence by guideline authors who bring to the process their . . . [Full Text of this Article]

AUTHOR INFORMATION
Author Affiliation: Division of Clinical Research, Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC) in Support of NIH, Bethesda, Maryland.

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