Knowing What To Do: International Perspectives on the Roles of Clinical Guidelines and Patient Preferences in Patient Care

What gives guidance for patient care decisions? Clinical practice guidelines and patient preferences provide two complementary sources of guidance for clinicians and patients alike. Clinical practice guidelines bring the best scientific and clinical advice to bear on specific patient situations. Patient preferences temper clinical guidelines. The papers from the Nursing Informatics 1997 conference in Stockholm, Sweden, that are included in this issue provide a rich array of perspectives on the roles of informatics in eliciting and communicating guidelines and patient preferences and in ensuring strong infrastructures for practice.Duff1 offers the perspective of a health services researcher, looking to the informatics community to both provide the evidence necessary to build solid guidelines and also to build the tools necessary to deliver guidelines at the point of care. Zielstorff2 and Henry et al.3 answer Duff's …