From research to evidence to context: implementing and using guidelines as decision aids to personalise care

Clinical guidelines represent the distillation of available evidence into recommendations—they are essentially a form of consensus. Guidelines may not address important contextual issues for organisations or individuals. Guidelines must be contextualised to relevant organisations, clinical situations and individual older people with diabetes to be useful. Unless we ask the ‘right’ questions we are likely to miss contextual and other issues that are essential to personalised care. It is necessary to identify the unique elements of an organisation or an individual’s life to consider context. The Knowledge to Action framework can be used to implement guidelines in most practice settings/organisational context. Shared decision-making can help identify the person’s unique context.