The Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne

About Hospital Clinical Guidelines

There are two groups at the RCH involved in the development of Guidelines. The Clinical Effectiveness Committee was established by Nursing Services to support the development and revision of evidence based guidelines supporting nursing practice across the RCH campus. Whilst both groups work collaboratively each group has a different development process. The Clinical Practice Guideline group generally produce guidelines for the emergency and/or acute management of paediatric patients. The steps for guideline development for each group are outlined as per the following links:

• Hospital Clinical Guideline Development Process
• Clinical Practice Guideline group

There are currently 20 RCH policies. The table below summarises the characteristics and scope of RCH based Policies, Procedures, Hospital Clinical Guidelines and Clinical Practice Guidelines.

Policy	Procedure	Hospital Clinical Guideline	Clinical Practice Guideline
This is what we want to achieve. It reflects RCH's position on an issue and must be adhered to by all staff within the organisation	RCH specific Procedures contain recommended steps that must be followed in a specified situation	RCH specific Presents recommendations for RCH practice utilising evidence-based principles	Paediatric specific Presents evidence-based recommendations for the provision of paediatric care

Hospital Clinical Guidelines are most frequently used to support and guide Nursing practice at RCH. All Hospital Clinical Guidelines produced by RCH relate to at least one of the 20 RCH policies. All Clinical Guidelines relating to Nursing practice:

• are specific to RCH
• are created according to standardised proforma
• are evidence-based
• have specified creation and revision dates
• summarise stakeholder contribution and approval
• are developed, revised and ratified via the Clinical Effectiveness Committee