ABSTRACT
Sietse Wieringa presents his findings from an ethnographic study of guideline panels across three countries, showing how they used (or did not use) mindlines in their deliberations, and how this – and therefore the resulting guidance – varied. The panels all struggled with a fundamental problem, namely that the rules expected them to eliminate mindlines from knowledge translation and use only explicit, formally appraised knowledge, but due to limited available research evidence, the clinicians had little choice but to call upon their own mindlines. He suggests some ways of dealing with the implications of this finding, both philosophically and practically.
