The terms policy, requirement and guideline are regularly used throughout the literature consulted in association with this review. Different authors or agencies may apply theterms under slightly different circumstances or with a slight difference in emphasis. For the purpose of this review, the following interpretations have been applied.
Policy: when used by a government department (for example, “health department policy”) or government agency (for example, British “NHS trust policy”), the term policy has generally been considered as a mandatory requirement.
Requirement: when used by a government department (for example, “health department requirement”) or government agency (for example, British “NHS trust requirement”), the term requirement has generally been considered as a mandatory requirement (particularly when appearing within a “policy” document).
When used as a general statement without further clarification or definition, the term requirement has generally been interpreted in the same manner as guideline (below).
Guideline: a statement of recommended or best practice. Guidelines are generally consensus recommendations for best practice but are not considered mandatory.
Clinical practice guideline: the term guideline when used in medicine (or more often clinical practice guideline) is usually defined as … “systematically developed statements to assist practitioners with decisions about appropriate health care for patients in specific circumstances” (refer to section 3 in the main part of this review).
The distinction between items which are mandatory requirements and recommended best practice is also applied to laboratory accreditation documents produced by the National Pathology Accreditation Advisory Council (NPAAC). NPAAC standards are equivalent to mandatory requirements, whereas guidelines provide more detailed information and recommendations with regard to preferred practice.