Medical guidelines and protocols are documents aimed at improving the quality of medical care by offering support in medical decision making in the form of management recommendations based on scientific evidence. Whereas medical guidelines are intended for nation-wide use, and thus omit medical management details that may differ among hospitals, medical protocols are aimed at local use, e.g., w...

In Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century, the Institute of Medicine proposes 6 specific aims to improve the quality of care in the United States.1 These specific aims are to provide care that is safe, effective, timely, efficient, equitable, and patient centered. Of these goals, patient-centered care has received the least attention from both the scientific commun...

European Renal Best Practice (ERBP) is the official guidance-providing body of the European Renal Association-European Dialysis and Transplant Association. This paper introduces the mission statement of ERBP, and provides insight on what this implies for guideline production. We will discuss that improving patient outcome does not only require attention to high-quality evidence, but also unders...