Grant: Meetings, Planning and Dissemination Grant: Circulatory and Respiratory Health

The Canadian Thoracic Society (CTS) has recently established a new committee - the Canadian Respiratory Guidelines Committee (CRGC) - to manage all guideline-related issues directly. A number of new Canadian guidelines respiratory diseases (especially in Pediatrics) are currently being developed, and a number of existing guidelines are being reviewed (Sleep Apnea) or require imminent review (Asthma). In response to this increased guideline development activity and a recognized need to increase efforts to implement these guidelines into primary care, the CRGC has prioritized the establishment of a uniform, standardized, high-quality and valid guideline development process for all CTS guidelines. Members of various CTS guideline subcommittees are disease content experts or end-users but have little methodological experience in guideline development. Given this fact, the CRGC recognizes the need to continue its efforts to educate CTS members on the various guideline writing methods and tools with the help of guideline experts. We propose a "hands-on" workshop, bringing together the various Canadian Respiratory Guideline writers (including respirologists and primary care physicians) and other interested parties, along with expert moderators, in order to train writers in the use of various guideline development tools and instruments. This will be a 1.5 day meeting which will include presentations by guideline experts in the field of dissemination and implementation, facilitated interactive sessions on methodological tools and instruments, an open session to discuss ways of reaching consensus by informal and informal means and a session embedding implementation into guidelines. The goal of this meeting is to expand the knowledge of the CRGC process and understanding of accepted methodological tools to reduce the burden of guideline development process.