The RCOG produces a series of clinical Green-top Guidelines. Clinical guidelines are an increasingly familiar part of clinical practice, with a principal aim to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of clinical care through the identification of good practice and desired outcomes.
Green-top Guidelines provide systematically developed recommendations to assist clinicians in making evidence-based decisions about appropriate treatment for specific conditions. They are concise documents, providing specific recommendations on focused areas of clinical practice.
The procedure for developing these guidelines has evolved from being one of informal consensus opinion to being evidence-based. This Clinical Governance Advice guidance has been updated in line with the methodology used in the development of the national guidelines produced by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN). Since 2010, the development process for Green-top Guidelines has been accredited by NICE and, as such, the procedure must be followed as stated.
The aim of this document is to assist and guide those developing Green-top Guidelines and to support implementation.