The Student Room Group

Learning NICE guidelines

Hi guys, just finishing my first clinical year and coming up to exams. I've used a two textbook combo of detail/understanding book (K/C big or Davidson's big) and Oxford Handbook to learn my SBA knowledge. So many SBAs test the first line treatment of conditions/first line investigations as in the NICE guidelines. However, I find that big textbooks are awful at telling you the order of investigations or treatment (something that SBAs love: "which is the MOST appropriate investigation/treatment or "first line"). The Oxford Handbook isn't great either (e.g. heart failure: it just lists the drugs not the fact that you have to give ACE-I and beta blocker/CCB then add spiro etc). I've actually learnt guidelines through Passmedicine.

Is there actually a better way of getting to grips with guidelines except through Passmed? They surely can't expect us to trawl through 200 page documents per condition and even the summary pathways are not concise. Any advice greatly appreciated as I go into my specialties year next year.
Why not use the NICE guideline website itself?
I think this is probably what they hope you will get from "being present" on your clinical rotations. If something is important or common, you ought to see it at some point in clinic and see/hear how it is managed...

Alternatively, the NICE Clinical Knowledge Summaries are great... http://cks.nice.org.uk/ Obviously many of them are for niche things you don't necessary need to know about in detail but most contain a simple "How should I manage..." paragraph.

Just be disciplined about the CKSs you read... the approaches to managing asthma, COPD, diabetes, heart failure, rheumatoid arthritis, etc are important, complicated (first line, second line...) and probably change every few years... you can learn about balanitis, plantar fasciitis, etc from books and skip the NICE guidance!
Reply 3
Original post by MonteCristo
I think this is probably what they hope you will get from "being present" on your clinical rotations. If something is important or common, you ought to see it at some point in clinic and see/hear how it is managed...

But it's scattered at best.

Alternatively, the NICE Clinical Knowledge Summaries are great... http://cks.nice.org.uk/ Obviously many of them are for niche things you don't necessary need to know about in detail but most contain a simple "How should I manage..." paragraph.

This.

Just be disciplined about the CKSs you read... the approaches to managing asthma, COPD, diabetes, heart failure, rheumatoid arthritis, etc are important, complicated (first line, second line...) and probably change every few years... you can learn about balanitis, plantar fasciitis, etc from books and skip the NICE guidance!

And this.
Reply 4
im facing similar issues as well. haha. knowing important lists but no idea which comes first.
Passmedicine really shows you that you have to be real concise with your investigation/treatment.
Any other tips for remembering guidelines? :biggrin:
Besides passmedicine which is pretty much the main way to try and drill guidelines into your head, I found that revising with friends and quizzing each other on the guideline also worked. Otherwise there's no way to escape it - it's just a horrible slog of rote learning. At least Passmedicine sums it up clearly.

The Map of Medicine used to be really good but googling it just now it seems it's gone private so... maybe not haha.

IMO the actual NICE guidelines require a detective to find the relevant facts. That's after you've actually managed to find the document which has the guidelines in it... the NICE website looks so clean but is so hard to find what you want sometimes.

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