A systematic review and quality appraisal of bereavement care practice guidelines

Bereavement care practice guidelinesassist in delivering high‐quality bereavement care. However, the quality of published guidelinesis unknown. A systematic review was conducted to identify and evaluate the quality of the process used to develop bereavement care practice guidelinesusing the Appraisal of Guidelinesfor Research and Evaluation (AGREE II) instrument. A keyword search was conducted in MEDLINE‐Complete, CINAHL‐Complete, Health‐Source (Nursing/Academic Edition), Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, and an internet search engine in October 2017. Sixteen guidelineswith differing scope and purpose but similar core values were identified from the grey literatureand then appraised at high quality (n = 1), moderate quality (n = 4), or low quality (n = 11). The domains "clarity of presentation" and "scope and purpose" achieved the highest scores (mean ± SD 71.0 ± 27.6% and 64.4 ± 37.5%, respectively), while " editorial independence" showed the lowest mean score (9.2 ± 13.3%). While few of the bereavement care practice guidelinesmet the AGREE II quality standards related to their development process, neither the quality of the content of each guidelinenor the in‐context application was assessed by the AGREE II instrument. Ongoing development of practice guidelinesmay benefit from consideration and application of the framework outlined in the AGREE II or similar appraisal instrument.