Scope, content and quality of clinical pharmacy practice guidelines: a systematic review

Background Guidelines for pharmacy practitioners regarding various clinical pharmacy activities have been published in
a number of countries. There is a need to review the guidelines and identify the scope of activities covered as a prelude to
developing internationally acceptable common guidelines.
Aim To review the scope of clinical pharmacy guidelines and assess the extent to which these guidelines conform to quality
standards as per the AGREE II instrument.
Method Medline, Embase, Guideline Central, International Pharmaceutical Abstracts, Google Scholar and Google (for grey
literature) were searched for the period 2010 to January 2023. Guidelines which focused on any health care setting and any
clinical pharmacy activity were included. Data were extracted and quality assessed independently by two reviewers using
the English version of the AGREE II instrument.
Results Thirty-eight guidelines were included, mostly originating from Australia (n = 10), Ireland (n = 8), UK (n = 7) and
USA (n = 5). Areas covered included medication reconciliation, medicines optimisation, medication management and transi-
tion of care. As per the AGREE II assessment, the highest score was obtained for the scope and purpose domain and the low-
est score for rigour of development, mainly due to non-consideration of literature/evidence to inform guideline development.
Conclusion Clinical pharmacy guidelines development processes need to focus on all quality domains and should take a
systematic approach to guideline development. Guidelines need to further emphasise person-centred care and clinical com-
munication. There is a scope to harmonise the guidelines internationally considering the diverse practices, standards and
legislations across different geographies