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Best practice is the means for providing the best possible outcome for patients based on judgments that consider patient needs, clinical experience, and the best available evidence.

Best practice can be found at the intersection of three realms: best available clinical evidence, clinical expertise and experience, and patient values and expectations. Those striving for best practice consider and integrate all three elements into the decisions they make and the actions they take.

Best practice is situational. The descriptions of best practice provided within these pages must be considered within the context of facility policy, provincial legislation and regulation, and other local factors before they are applied.

Furthermore, best practice is continually evolving. In a rapidly changing field like healthcare, new developments and discoveries come up every day that influence the way practices are applied. MRTs are encouraged to always seek out the most up-to-date information on their topic of interest, because newer information might impact the decision-making process.

The CAMRT development of these Best Practice Guidelines was modelled from the start on the accepted understanding of clinical practice guidelines. In 1990, the Institute of Medicine described guidelines in a way that is still held as the standard definition even today:

“Clinical practice guidelines are systematically developed statements to assist practitioner and patient decisions about appropriate health care for specific clinical circumstances”.

Within this definition, CAMRT has used three important themes to guide the development and review of all the best practice guideline documentation: Recommendation, Rigour and Resource.

Recommendation

The guidelines are a set of recommendations that describe, rather than prescribe, a high standard of MRT professional behaviour. The description is presented first through a broad recommendation, followed by key rationale and discussion on how an MRT might reach the described goals.

Recommendations do not constitute a mandatory standard of practice, and attempt to use a language and tone that clearly differentiates from regulation throughout.

Rigour

To be effective, guidelines must be developed through a rigorous process. The development committee strove to gather and consider the best available evidence for the topics under consideration. The rigour was extended by ensuring a full cross-section of representation on all committees and review panels, and by a multi-layered process for development and review that incorporated the collective expertise of many outside reviewers.

Resource

This resource provides trustworthy information based on evidence that has been specifically researched and written with MRTs in mind. The guidelines were developed to help augment MRT judgment and decision making in their day-to-day practice.

The development of the guidelines was also driven by the goal of creating a resource that would be appreciated and used by MRTs of all levels of experience and expertise from every location across Canada. This process started with the selection of topics that would be relevant to the MRT profession. It informed all the decisions made about the documents: the number of topics, the level of detail, the format, the links to include, etc. It culminated in the development of this interactive website.

As development continues, the CAMRT hopes to enhance this website as a resource for Canadian MRTs by creating mechanisms for gathering and responding to feedback.

MRT:  the use of the term “MRT” reflects those technologists and therapists providing diagnostic and/or therapeutic healthcare services to patients. It is expected that all MRTs will adhere to the CAMRT Member Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct “performing only the procedures for which the MRT has acquired competence”, or having the knowledge, skills and judgement in order to perform the duties of their respective discipline(s).

Patient:  the use of the term “Patient” may also reflect individuals acting on the patient’s behalf, such as the responsible “family member” (ex., parent), or the patient’s “SDM” (substitute decision maker) or “POA” (individual holding the patient’s Power of Attorney)

Responsible Healthcare Professional:  the use of the term “responsible healthcare professional” reflect those individuals responsible for overseeing the patient’s overall healthcare journey (the ordering of tests, procedures, treatments, etc., for the patient). Such individuals are most usually, physicians, radiologists, oncologists, etc.

Gender Neutral Text:  It is our intent that the language used in the BPGs will be revised to be inclusive of modern terminology associated with gender (non-binary). Since gender-neutral language is dynamic and fluid, the process of updating the BPGs will be done over time during their respective validation reviews.

Should you identify a concern regarding any language used in a BPG, please contact bpg@camrt.ca.