---

October 1998

Introduction

Guidelines in Practice

Corinne Short, Editor

News

GPs urged to curb antibiotic prescribing for sore throats

Joint guidelines with pharmacists could cut GP workload

Editorial

Putting guidelines into practice

Dr Mark Charny, Director, National Centre for Clinical Audit

Personal View

Applying guidelines to general practice

GP Matthew Lockyer explains how his practice decides which guidelines to follow

Guideline Development

Why we need COPD guidelines

Dr Mike Pearson discusses the background to the BTS's recently published COPD guidelines

Guideline Implementation

Setting up a practice anticoagulant clinic

Dr David Archer explains how his practice improved standards of care for their patients on warfarin using local guidelines

Putting back pain guidelines into practice

Dr Charles Sears gives advice on developing local guidelines for acute low back pain

Audit

Using audit to implement change in diabetes care

Louise Ingram describes how a multi-practice audit helped bring about changes to improve diabetes care

Patient-held records improve asthma management

Katharine Abba, of the Liverpool PCAG, describes how the Mersey Asthma Care Record helped improve asthma care in general practice

Top Tips

How to select guidelines

Richard Baker, Director, Eli Lilly National Clinical Audit Centre, University of Leicester

Questions & Answers

Your questions answered

Members of our editorial board answer your questions about developing and applying guidelines

Out Of Hours

Whatever happened to evidence-based medicine?

Dr Phil Hammond, GP, lecturer and presenter of BBC2's Trust Me, I'm a Doctor