NICE has put out a Twitter plea for GPs to join an informal online forum in a bid to help make its output ‘more GP friendly’.
Co-moderator Dr Julian Treadwell, who is a Wiltshire GP and vice-chair of the RCGP’s over-diagnosis group, used the social networking site to urge GPs to ‘please join us’ following the setting up of a NICE reference panel designed to reflect GPs’ views when clinical guidelines are developed in the future.
If GPs join the forum they will be emailed ‘relevant questions ‘ and asked for feedback. For example, GPs will be asked if NICE’s guidelines need improving; if NICE should produce guidance on a particular topic; if a guideline doesn’t answer the questions which really matter to GPs or patients and whether NICE’s recommendations could be clearer.
The new panel follows years of disputes over controversial guidelines changes and a fall in GPs’ availability to sit on guidelines committees. Some of NICE’s decisions, such as the move to place millions more low-risk people on statins for primary prevention, have come under fire by GPs.
Talking at a Pulse roundtable discussion last month NICE chair Professor David Haslam said that the new reference panel would give ‘GPs the opportunity to tell us if our guidelines need improving’.
GPs: Come and help us help NICE make their output more GP friendly. A new, informal on-line forum. Pls join us! https://t.co/OvQAgvdpjZ
— Julian Treadwell (@JulianTreadwel1) July 4, 2017
