T/CACM 1049-2017 Expert consensus technical specifications for the development and revision of guidelines for clinical practice in traditional Chinese medicine

Scope

Main technical content: Forming expert consensus is an indispensable and important step in the process of revising clinical practice guidelines. The International Guidelines Alliance believes that the process of gathering experts' opinions through group decision-making at different stages and on different issues is the process of consensus. The GRADE system requires that through one or multiple rounds of expert consensus, factors such as the balance of benefits and harms, patients' preferences and values, and resource input be comprehensively considered to ultimately reach a consistent recommendation. Currently, the main methods for forming consensus internationally are formal consensus-building methods. Looking at the clinical guidelines that have been published so far, most of them fail to clearly report the specific methods and processes of forming expert consensus, and the implementation process lacks corresponding detailed reports, making it impossible to obtain objective evaluation criteria. This phenomenon is more common in the field of TCM clinical practice guidelines. The reasons for this phenomenon are mainly twofold. On the one hand, the guideline developers ignore the importance of transparency and objectivity in the implementation of expert consensus. On the other hand, there is a lack of clear methods and technical norms for forming expert consensus. Therefore, based on the existing internationally recognized consensus-building methods, focusing on the specific steps in the process of revising clinical practice guidelines and combining with the particularities of the process of revising TCM clinical practice guidelines, it is of great significance to formulate technical norms for forming expert consensus in TCM clinical practice guidelines, which can provide high-quality guidance for clinical practice in TCM.

Development Information

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