Clinical guidelines are a mixed blessing. Wise clinicians know that they offer a general pattern of doing things that usually results in favorable outcomes. They also know there are lots of situations when guidelines can’t be applied because of unique patient characteristics.
Guidelines can be dangerous if we apply them indiscriminately. Education and experience teaches us when and when not to follow them.
The problem with guidelines is that people without our knowledge or experience have placed themselves in positions where they judge physicians by whether we follow a particular guideline or not. Never mind that there are competing guidelines, and that the web repository of them shut down a month ago.
That reminds me of a colorful Swedish analogy my grandmother often used, “som fan läser Bibeln”, translated “like Satan reads the Bible”.
One of many American Christian authors writes about it this way:
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