The Endocrine Society plays a role in helping endocrinologists improve their quality of care through the development of clinical practice guidelines on various endocrine-related topics. The Society has published 23 guidelines to date, with 16 guidelines in varying stages of development or revision. The newest guideline, “Pheochromocytoma/Paraganglioma,” was published in the June edition of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. Upcoming topics include a revision of the “Androgens in Women” guideline, and new guidelines on Paget’s disease of the bone, acromegaly, and pharmacologic management of obesity.
Society guidelines are developed by a task force of experts and offer practical, evidence-based recommendations that are developed using the grading of recommendations, assessment, development, and evaluation (GRADE) system to describe both the strength of recommendations and the quality of evidence. The Society’s development process follows the majority of Institute of Medicine recommendations for trustworthy guidelines, and improvements are frequently made by the Clinical Guidelines Subcommittee to ensure that the guidelines are of the highest quality.
All guidelines are available on the Society’s website www.endocrine.org/cpg for free download. While research shows that physicians value guidelines that lay out the evidence for a recommendation, there is also an acknowledgement that this does not always fit with the way physicians practice. The Society has developed a number of tools and resources to help physicians integrate the guidelines into their practice, including pocket cards, webinars, and performance improvement modules, and is embarking on an initiative to provide the guideline content in an e-format.
Endocrine Society members are encouraged to help shape the guideline program by emailing suggestions for new topics and tools to [email protected].
— Kutler is director, quality improvement, for the Endocrine Society.
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