Appraisal of maternity management and family planning guidelines using the agree II instrument in India

Abstract

Introduction: Guideline development gathered pace in India after the inception of National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) in 2005. However, there is a lack of adequate information about guideline development process, review, and update. This paper reports on the systematic appraisal of Indian guidelines related to maternity management (MM) and family planning (FP) using the Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation II (AGREE II) instrument, which was one of the components of a pilot research in 2012-13. Materials and Methods: Forty-four selected guidelines about MM and FP, identified through a consensus building workshop, were independently appraised by two appraisers with AGREE instrument having six different domains. Mean item scores, domain scores, and standardized scores were calculated by averaging the scores across the two appraisers. Results: Most guidelines scored high in scope and purpose and clarity of presentation. However, they had little documentation about the development group member details, incorporation of patient views, evidence search method, method chosen for formulating recommendations, tools for application, potential barriers, cost implications, and information about the funding body. Nonclinical guidelines scored higher than clinical guidelines (P = 0.01) for MM in the domain applicability. Clinical FP guidelines scored higher than nonclinical guidelines in the domain of rigor of development (0.01). Conclusion: Despite being clinically sound, Indian guidelines score poorly due to weak documentation about their development process. It is recommended that the guideline development process be improved with systematic documentation for achieving standardization.

Keywords

• Guideline appraisal
• guidelines
• maternity management (MM) guidelines