Guidelines carry real weight in nursing papers, from EBP projects to care plans, but they are awkward to cite because the "author" is usually a committee or an organisation. This page shows the APA 7 format, with short notes for AMA and Vancouver.
A clinical practice guideline is a set of recommendations for care, developed by a professional society, agency or expert panel, usually after reviewing the research evidence. It is different from a single study, from a textbook chapter, and from a patient handout. Guidelines may be published as a stand-alone document on an organisation's site or as an article in a journal, and that difference decides which format you use. Your papers on evidence-based practice and quality improvement will lean on guidelines often.
About the examples. Organisations, authors, journals and URLs below are fictional, and the DOIs are placeholders (10.xxxx/xxxxx). They show the pattern only. Always copy details from the guideline in front of you, and follow your program's style requirements.
When the guideline is credited to an organisation rather than to named people, the organisation is the author. APA treats a stand-alone guideline like a report: the title is italic and in sentence case, and the edition goes in parentheses after the title. If the organisation is also the publisher, leave the publisher out. Add the URL at the end without a final period.
If the guideline has a number in a series, add it in parentheses after the title, for example (Guideline No. 4). If your instructor wants a description of the work, it goes in square brackets after the title. Otherwise none is required.
When individual panel members are credited as authors on the document, list them like any other authors, up to 20. Give the publisher if it is a different body from the authors.
If the guideline appears in a journal, use the journal article format. The author may be a group or a panel, and the title, journal, volume, issue and pages follow as usual. Cite the journal, not the database where you found it.
Which of these applies depends on how the title page or first page credits the work. Use exactly what the document says. See the APA 7 guide for the basics and the government report guide for agency-authored guidance.
The ProNursingWriters team can help you find, appraise and cite guidelines correctly for your nursing assignment.
Guidelines get revised, so the exact version matters.
| Guideline credited to | Parenthetical | Narrative |
|---|---|---|
| An organisation with an abbreviation | First: (Regional Nursing Safety Council [RNSC], 2022). Later: (RNSC, 2022) | Regional Nursing Safety Council (RNSC, 2022) |
| Three or more named authors | (Okafor et al., 2023) | Okafor et al. (2023) |
The APA in-text guide covers group authors, page numbers and quotations in more detail. When you cite a guideline's recommendation, attribute the strength or level of evidence to the guideline as well: it is the panel's judgement, not yours.
The same fictional guideline in the two numbered styles. In both, the organisation is the author when no individuals are credited.
A guideline published in a journal is cited as a journal article in either style. Vancouver has institutional variants, so check your program's version. See the AMA and Vancouver guides.
Students often mix these up. Both synthesise evidence, but they answer different questions and are cited differently.
| Feature | Clinical practice guideline | Systematic review |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Recommends what practitioners should do | Summarises what the research found on one question |
| Typical author | Organisation or expert panel | Named research team |
| Where you find it | Organisation site or journal | Journal or evidence database |
| How to cite | Report-style entry with group author, or journal article | Journal article with named authors |
| Use it to say | "The council recommends..." | "The review found..." |
A guideline's recommendations rest on studies, but you should cite the studies themselves only if you have read them. If you learned about a study through the guideline, treat it as a secondary source ("as cited in").
As always, follow your institution's academic-integrity policy, and see how to avoid plagiarism. If you want official style help, the APA Style website is the authoritative source.
The organisation or panel named on the document. Use its full name in the reference list, and abbreviate only if the abbreviation is well known or you will use it repeatedly.
Only if it has one. Many stand-alone guidelines have only a URL. Never guess a DOI.
Cite the full guideline document you are drawing on. If you used only a summary version, cite that version as its own document.
Cite the guideline for what the panel recommends. Cite a study directly only if you read the study itself.