Finding Clinical Practice Guidelines

Clinical practice guidelines aim to help providers choose appropriate healthcare options for specific clinical circumstances. You may need to find these guidelines to support your coursework. This guide provides instructions on how to find guidelines in the library and online.

Search Everything

One of the first ways to find clinical practice guidelines is to use the Search Everything box on the library homepage and add a search term of guidelines to your search. Below is an example search:

 statins AND "heart disease" AND guidelines 

In addition to this, there are also ways you can find these guidelines in specific databases. Below are instructions for databases with guideline filters.

Databases with Guideline Filters

CINAHL with Full Text

To find guidelines in this database, follow the steps below:

1. Click on the database link above. This will take you directly to the advanced search page.
2. Enter your keywords in the search field.
3. Scroll down to Limit Your Results.
4. Select Practice Guidelines under the Publication Type scroll menu and hit search.

DynaMed Plus

To find guidelines in this database, follow the steps below:

1. Click on the database link above.
2. Enter your keywords into the search field and hit search.
3. Click on the title of the result that best identifies your topic. 
4. Select Guidelines and Resources in the left-hand navigation menu.
5. At the top of the results, hover over the menu titled In this Section, and click on the the link for guidelines. You can expand the guidelines section to see them broken down by country.  

Medline Complete

To find guidelines in this database, follow the steps below:

1. Click on the database link above. This will take you directly to the advanced search page.
2. Enter your keywords in the search field.
3. Scroll down to Limit Your Results.
4. Select Guideline under the Publication Type scroll menu and hit search.

PubMed

To find guidelines in this database, follow the steps below:

1. Click on the database link above.
2. Enter your keywords into the search field and hit search.
3. Scroll down and click Additional Filters to the left of the search results.
4. Select Article Type in the left-hand navigation menu.
5. Select Practice Guideline from the menu, and hit Show.