The Joint Royal Colleges Ambulance Liaison Committee (JRCALC) is an organisation set up to support the UK Ambulance Service. Members of the committee are healthcare professionals allied to prehopsital medicine. The committee’s brief is wide ranging, advising on issues of policy, audit, training, equipment, practice, process and politics. An important role for JRCALC is the provision of clinical practice guidelines to the UK ambulance service. A sub-committee of JRCALC comprising clinicians, users, academics, and specialty experts is responsible for the development of the guidelines.

The guidelines, reviewed biennially, aim to improve the quality of clinical care by providing national guidance based on current best evidence. Guideline topics are determined by the guideline development sub-committee in consultation with the main JRCALC committee, the wider ambulance service community and specialty experts. Development of research protocols, retrieval, assessment and synthesis of available evidence, updating or writing new guidelines is undertaken by topic-specific expert groups within the guideline development group.

The draft guideline together with key points, an update analysis and a clinical decision algorithm, if appropriate, is presented to the guideline development sub-committee at one of the consensus development conferences. Prior to publication the completed guideline will be circulated to the UK ambulance service for comment. Issues arising from the consultation process will be considered by the editorial team liaising with the topic-specific expert group if necessary.

Guidelines are updated between two and five years after publication depending on the emergence of new evidence, change in law, or change in clinical practice. Updates relating to errors will be detailed on the JRCALC website or on the JRCALC guideline development website.