Clinical Pathways have been in existence for at least 50 years. They arose from the need to give practitioners some guidance across disciplines on appropriate decision-making about health care for specific circumstances. The clinical or practice guidelines do include guidelines to assessment and care. These terms should not be used interchangeably, they are different. Critical Pathways have arisen as a result of the movement in health care toward standardizing care and outcomes-oriented approaches to treatment.
Critical pathways are most effective guides when derived from research data.
Systematically developed statements to assist practitioner and patients in determining appropriate health care for specific circumstances. Statements include the indications for doing a procedure or treatment and the accepted management of specific clinical problems. Many of these clinical or practice guidelines have been developed by National Institutes of Health, Agency for Health Care Practice Research. Some of the NIH guidelines are based on research done on outcomes of care. For example, the benchmarks for care of premature infants in rural small hospitals without neonatologists would emphasize appropriate emergency care and safe transport while the benchmarks for preemie care at level three nurseries would include preparing parents for home care.