Table 3 Summary of the pointers and recommendations clinical guideline developers should consider when including lay members in their guideline developments

Language

Clinical guideline developers should ensure the language used in all aspects of the guideline development is accessible to all committee members. Specific suggestions include: ensuring the use of plain language during meetings, avoiding scientific or medical abbreviations, translation of scientific literature and content into plain language formats as needed

Engagement and invitation

Clinical guideline developers should continue to seek ways of engaging with lay members (and other committee members as appropriate) as early in the development process as possible. This can include: inviting lay members to speak during meetings, directly seeking their opinions during discussion, endeavouring to ensure lay members understand the context and content of the development process

Training and support

It is important that clinical guideline developers continue to understand and embrace the importance of providing training opportunities to the various members of the committee. Training should include the importance of lay member involvement and outcome selection. This includes training for: the chair of the committee, health professionals, technical team members and lay members themselves. Opportunities for this could include expanding on the outcome section of the PIP lay member training session or communicating it at committee level in the early meetings

Timeline

Clinical guideline developers should explore whether there is flexibility to the development timeline. Specific suggestions include: seeking input to outcome selection at other junctures, establishing “break-out” working group about specific topics, increasing the timeframe for guideline development by having pre-meetings or engagements with committee members

Other methods and resources

Clinical guideline developers could consider seeking alternative and complementary methods of collecting lay member input which can be used to inform committee meetings, specifically in relation to health outcomes. This could include using other qualitative methods like focus groups and already existing resources such as core outcome sets (COS)