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Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) have been developed for many years with the aim of improving the quality of care. A review of the use of CPGs and assessments of CPG compliance among practitioners so far would aid the understanding of factors influencing CPG compliance. This study seeks to provide this.

A general review and discussion of CPGs in areas of their attributes, benefits and pitfalls were carried out. Articles concerning the assessment of CPG compliance were also reviewed to understand the kind of data collected for such assessments (qualitative vs quantitative), the methods used to collect data (objective versus subjective), and the assessment measures employed (process versus outcome).

A total of 57 CPG compliance assessment studies were reviewed. Almost two‐thirds employed objective methods. Of the subjective assessments, 47 per cent analysed solely quantitative data, 32 per cent analysed solely qualitative information and 21 per cent analysed both. More than four‐fifths of all studies used process measures to determine CPG compliance and only 5 per cent used solely outcome measures.

Depending on the methods used, assessments can help identify various factors influencing CPG compliance. Such factors may be related to the physician, guidelines, health system or patient. A good understanding of these factors and their role in influencing compliance behaviour will help health regulators and administrators plan better and more effective strategies to improve doctors' CPG compliance.

This review looks at the various aspects of CPGs to understand how these influence practitioners' compliance.

Process modeling guidelines are a valuable instrument for increasing the quality of process models. Since finding and selecting suitable guidelines are challenging, this paper aims to find and select suitable guidelines because they are scattered across the many studies of the literature. Also, not all of them are supported by empirical studies.

The authors conducted a systematic literature review to collect and analyze process modeling guidelines present in the literature and the empirical evidence that supports them.

The authors investigated a total of 793 articles and identified a total of 45 process modeling guidelines in five different categories. For each of these guidelines, the authors report empirical evidence together with corresponding measures, such as comprehension accuracy and error probability.

Compared to the prior literature reviews on process model quality and process modeling guidelines, this article extends current knowledge by analyzing the empirical evidence and variables associated with each guideline. This analysis provides guidance for practitioners and scholars on which guidelines to use while modeling a process and perform further research on.

With a view to enabling organisations provide a clear understanding of firm value creation, several national and supranational institutions have produced guidelines and frameworks for externally reporting intellectual capital (IC). In many cases regulators, the accounting profession and accounting scholars have driven these initiatives. The purpose of this paper is to summarise, analyse and compare the guidelines and frameworks that have been developed with a focus on externally reporting IC.

The paper analyses the assumptions underpinning 20 guidelines and frameworks that have been developed with a focus on reporting IC using a self-constructed framework.

The review resulted in a comparison of IC reporting guidelines and framework based on target audience, role of IC within the organisational strategic management process and reporting IC indicator. It provides an understanding of the state of the art in relation to external reporting of IC.

The insights provided by the comparison of the guidelines and frameworks are likely to be helpful for practitioners wanting to adopt or develop an IC reporting model for their organisation. Policy-makers will find these insights beneficial when attempting to refine existing frameworks and guidelines for reporting IC and in developing new ones to suit various circumstances. Also, this paper provides a useful review for academics.

This is the first paper to provide a review of a large number of business reporting guidelines and frameworks with a focus on IC. It is a valuable reference for practitioners, policy-makers and academics on IC reporting models.

By exploiting the relationships between Six Sigma and quality management systems (QMS) based on the ISO 9001 standard, this paper proposes a set of guidelines to combine and integrate both approaches in a systematic way. The guidelines are organised into integration topics, and each one is linked to the clauses of the ISO 9001 standard they refer to.

Based on the literature review, Six Sigma and QMS based on the ISO 9001 standard are thoroughly discussed and compared and beneficial synergies between them are identified. Based on this study, and to take advantage of the compatibilities and logical linkages between both approaches, guidelines for the integration of Six Sigma with the ISO 9001 requirements are developed.

Benefits resulting from the integration of Six Sigma with a QMS based on the ISO 9001 standard are mutual. The integration guidelines proposed in this paper provide a framework to unify process management practices, enhance the effectiveness of continual improvement efforts, facilitate the identification, evaluation and selection of Six Sigma projects, align the quality objectives defined for the QMS with Six Sigma project goals, establish relationships between the roles of a Six Sigma program and those inherent to an ISO 9001 QMS, and demonstrate how internal quality audits and management review benefit from a Six Sigma program.

The integration models and guidelines herein proposed can be further expanded to include other relevant normative references, particularly environmental management systems (ISO 14001) and safety and health management systems (OHSAS 18001).

The set of guidelines proposed in this paper is original and will be of practical value to the increasing number of organisations adopting a process‐model for the ISO 9001 standard, that seek to incorporate Six Sigma principles, practices, methods and tools within their QMS. The guidelines cover a wide spectrum of relevant activities that usually take place in the context of both initiatives. In addition, because each guideline is accompanied by the identification of the applicable clauses of ISO 9001, they provide a useful framework to develop, implement, maintain, and improve a QMS in parallel with a Six Sigma program.

This paper describes the implementation of a clinical guideline across three acute Trusts. A Clinical Effectiveness Steering Group identified prevention of venous thromboembolism as a health priority. A local guideline development group adapted the recommendations of an existing review and produced a local guideline. Then, a multidisciplinary implementation group developed the practical aspects of implementing guidelines into routine daily practice. They identified appropriate staff to carry out risk assessment and to administer appropriate prophylaxis, as necessary. They also produced a “guideline pack” containing a training resource manual and implementation aids. Following this a multiple strategy implementation programme was used to introduce the guidelines, and an evaluation was carried out eight to ten months after the introduction of the guidelines. The evaluation identified a number of areas for improving current practice. Guideline implementation is a complex, time‐consuming process.

This paper describes the implementation of a clinical guideline across three acute Trusts. A Clinical Effectiveness Steering Group identified prevention of venous thromboembolism as a health priority. A local guideline development group adapted the recommendations of an existing review and produced a local guideline. Then, a multidisciplinary implementation group developed the practical aspects of implementing guidelines into routine daily practice. They identified appropriate staff to carry out risk assessment and to administer appropriate prophylaxis, as necessary. They also produced a “guideline pack” containing a training resource manual and implementation aids. Following this a multiple strategy implementation programme was used to introduce the guidelines, and an evaluation was carried out eight to ten months after the introduction of the guidelines. The evaluation identified a number of areas for improving current practice. Guideline implementation is a complex, time‐consuming process.

Integrating preventive oral care into prenatal care is suggested as a strategy for reducing the burden of oral diseases among pregnant women and their offspring. This scoping review sought to synthesize available information and identify knowledge gaps on integrating oral health into prenatal care.

The scoping review was conducted based on the Joanna Briggs Institute scoping review framework using the following databases: CINAHL, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Medline, ProQuest Dissertation and theses Global, Psychinfo and Web of Science®. No search limits were used. Content analysis of the included articles was performed to identify conceptual frameworks, types of integration used, study designs, study objectives and outcomes.

Overall, 2,861 references were obtained from the databases search; and based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria 35 references were included in the final analysis. Of these 35 references, one document presented a conceptual model, six documents reviewed guidelines for integrating oral health in prenatal care, two were policy documents aimed at interprofessional collaboration for oral health during pregnancy, eight documents described programs focused on providing oral care during pregnancy, five of the references were literature reviews and the remaining 13 evaluated the impact of integration. Linkages between healthcare professionals were the most common type of integration used.

Despite advances in understanding integrated care concepts for healthcare delivery, there is little evidence available on the impact of the various types of, and strategies for, integrating oral health into prenatal care. Future research to bridge the identified gaps is recommended.

The originality of this study is to provide evidence on integrated oral healthcare during pregnancy.

This conceptual paper presents a proposal for improving a performance measurement (PM) system implementation process based on enterprise engineering (EE) guidelines, which gives the process a sense of completeness.

This paper analyzes a well-known process for PM systems implementation organized in two phases: identifying, designing and implementing the top-level performance measures; and cascading the top-level measures and identify appropriate lower-level performance measures. The proposed improvements to the studied process derive from the EE guidelines, which establish a basis for the structure of an organizational management system, the formalization and synchronization of processes, performance expectations, exception handling and change management.

The study reveals that not all EE guidelines are covered by the analyzed process, with four of them having no evidence of being adopted: involvement of people in process design and implementation; ensuring interoperability between different systems in the information structure; addressing of all possible exceptions; coherence and consistency of semantics across all processes.

By the lens of EE guidelines, this paper advances a how-to-guide. This paper can support managers and researchers on PM system design and implementation, given the importance and relevance of EE recommendations having a consistent and well-structured procedure.

National clinical guidelines can provide a way for health professionals, patients and users of services to work together to make decisions about care. For guidelines to have a positive impact on the quality of care, however, it is important that they are valid. The validity of a guideline is determined by its evidence base. Patients and users of services can contribute evidence about the quality of care and its outcomes which can be used to enhance a guideline's validity. Patient evidence can be accessed from existing research studies, from studies designed expressly to examine patient views or from the direct contribution of patients and users of services to guideline development. A seminar was held to debate the timing and ways in which patients and users of services are most effectively, and to the satisfaction of all, involved in developing clinical guidelines. They key factors influencing the success of health care professionals, patients and users of services collaborating to develop guidelines were identified. These include: deciding who should represent an identified patient community, supporting patient representatives by ensuring that more than one representative joins a group, ensuring there are links with patient representative groups, and that all participants feel prepared and so on. The seminar also identified questions about collaborative working requiring further research.

A growing tendency towards interdisciplinary and international social science research has resulted in the need for codes of ethics and guidelines that cross disciplinary and national boundaries. One set of such documents was developed by the RESPECT project, which produced Europe-wide professional and ethical guidelines for social sciences. This chapter builds on a semi-structured interview conducted with the Principal Investigator of the RESPECT project. Her thoughts are contextualised within the broader discussions of ethics and professional standards codes and guidelines as identified by other scholars in the field. Drawing on an experience-based account, the chapter offers guidance in overcoming some of the common concerns when developing international, interdisciplinary ethics codes and guidelines for social science research.