International journal of evidence-based healthcare
-
Int J Evid Based Healthc · Jun 2015
ReviewFormat guidelines to make them vivid, intuitive, and visual: use simple formatting rules to optimize usability and accessibility of clinical practice guidelines.
We present simple formatting rules derived from an extensive literature review that can improve the format of clinical practice guidelines (CPGs), and potentially increase the likelihood of being used. ⋯ The way text documents are formatted influences their accessibility and usability. Optimizing the formatting of CPGs is a relatively inexpensive intervention and can be used to facilitate the dissemination of evidence in healthcare. Applying simple formatting principles to make documents more vivid, intuitive, and visual is a practical approach that has the potential to influence the usability of guidelines and to influence the extent to which guidelines are read, remembered, and used in practice.