Making decisions using NICE guidelines

Prescribing medicines

When making a decision with people, you should use a medicine's description of its properties and the conditions attached to its use.

Sometimes we still recommend a medicine even if it does not have a UK marketing authorisation or there is no licence for a particular condition. For example, we might do this if there is enough evidence or experience of using the medicine for a condition to show its safety and efficacy.

You should follow relevant professional guidance and take full responsibility for the decision.

You can find more information on this at:

• the General Medical Council's prescribing guidance: prescribing unlicensed medicines
• the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency's drug safety update for off-label or unlicensed use of medicines.

Using recommendations

Our recommendations are based on:

• the trade-off between the benefits and harms of an intervention
• the quality of the underpinning evidence.

Some recommendations are made with more certainty than others. We word our recommendations to reflect this. Where there is clear and strong evidence of benefit, we will use the word 'offer'. Where the benefit is less certain we use the word 'consider'.

For more information take a look at our developing NICE guidelines: the manual.

Safeguarding

The government has produced statutory guidance that must be followed. This is in both adult safeguarding and the safeguarding of children and young people.

Remember that abuse and neglect:

• is common
• may also exist alongside other health problems or social care needs
• can happen anywhere, including in emergency departments and primary care.

Consider or suspect abuse as a contributory factor or cause of an injury in adults or children at risk.

Our guidance and quality standards on safeguarding will provide you with more information.