PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Allen F. Shaughnessy
AU  - Akansha Vaswani
AU  - Bonnie K. Andrews
AU  - Deborah R. Erlich
AU  - Frank D’Amico
AU  - Joel Lexchin
AU  - Lisa Cosgrove
TI  - Developing a Clinician Friendly Tool to Identify Useful Clinical Practice Guidelines: G-TRUST
AID  - 10.1370/afm.2119
DP  - 2017 Sep 01
TA  - The Annals of Family Medicine
PG  - 413--418
VI  - 15
IP  - 5
4099  - http://www.annfammed.org/content/15/5/413.short
4100  - http://www.annfammed.org/content/15/5/413.full
SO  - Ann Fam Med2017 Sep 01; 15
AB  - BACKGROUND Clinicians are faced with a plethora of guidelines. To rate guidelines, they can select from a number of evaluation tools, most of which are long and difficult to apply. The goal of this project was to develop a simple, easy-to-use checklist for clinicians to use to identify trustworthy, relevant, and useful practice guidelines, the Guideline Trustworthiness, Relevance, and Utility Scoring Tool (G-TRUST).METHODS A modified Delphi process was used to obtain consensus of experts and guideline developers regarding a checklist of items and their relative impact on guideline quality. We conducted 4 rounds of sampling to refine wording, add and subtract items, and develop a scoring system. Multiple attribute utility analysis was used to develop a weighted utility score for each item to determine scoring.RESULTS Twenty-two experts in evidence-based medicine, 17 developers of high-quality guidelines, and 1 consumer representative participated. In rounds 1 and 2, items were rewritten or dropped, and 2 items were added. In round 3, weighted scores were calculated from rankings and relative weights assigned by the expert panel. In the last round, more than 75% of experts indicated 3 of the 8 checklist items to be major indicators of guideline usefulness and, using the AGREE tool as a reference standard, a scoring system was developed to identify guidelines as useful, may not be useful, and not useful.CONCLUSION The 8-item G-TRUST is potentially helpful as a tool for clinicians to identify useful guidelines. Further research will focus on its reliability when used by clinicians.