With more than 5 million registered nurses estimated to be working in the United States, ensuring they receive high-quality training and guidance is crucial to patient safety, quality of care, and health outcomes. Nurses are often the first health care workers that a patient encounters. Nurses typically have the responsibility of early assessment, which can ease patient anxiety, documentation of key patient health information, and supporting timely treatment decisions to improve patient outcomes.
Many clinical practice guidelines and consensus statements on topics of interest to nurses were published within the past year. Today, we are showcasing ten of those guidelines, presented in order of publication. The topics in these guidelines include the care of patients with diabetes and obesity, older adult and end of life care in the ICU, fetal heart rate monitoring, and more.
Caring for Older Adults in the ICU
- Society: Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM)
- Published: May 2026
- Summary: Features five recommendations regarding vasodilatory shock, antipsychotic medications, post-ICU follow-up for older survivors of critical illness, and more.
Surviving Sepsis Campaign: International Guidelines for Management of Sepsis and Septic Shock 2026
- Societies: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM), Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM)
- Published: April 2026
- Summary: Features 129 recommendations regarding screening for sepsis in hospitals, biomarkers and rapid diagnostic tests for sepsis, timing of antibiotic initiation in hospitals, and more.
- Societies: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM), Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM)
- Published: April 2026
- Summary: Features 61 recommendations regarding recognition and management of infection, antimicrobial therapy, fluid therapy, and more.
Patient-Clinician Communication
- Society: American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO)
- Published: March 2026
- Summary: Features 44 recommendations regarding communications skills training, mitigating stigma, addressing barriers to communication, and more.
Standards of Care in Overweight and Obesity
- Society: American Diabetes Association (ADA)
- Published: January 2026
- Summary: Features 38 recommendations broken into two key sections: Pharmacologic Treatments and Weight Stigma and Bias.
Overweight and Obesity Management
- Society: National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)
- Published: January 2026
- Summary: Features more than 200 recommendations regarding identifying and assessing overweight and obesity in adults, preventing overweight, obesity, and central adiposity, and more.
Adult End-of-Life Care in the ICU
- Society: Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM)
- Published: December 2025
- Summary: Features 13 recommendations regarding futile and potentially inappropriate treatments in the ICU, withdrawal of life-sustaining treatments and symptom management in the ICU, patient palliative care needs, and more.
Diabetes Standards of Care 2026
- Society: American Diabetes Association (ADA)
- Published: December 2025
- Summary: Features hundreds of recommendations regarding the diagnosis and classification of diabetes, glycemic goals, hypoglycemia, hyperglycemic crises, diabetes care in the hospital, and more.
Intrapartum Fetal Heart Rate Monitoring: Interpretation and Management
- Society: American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG)
- Published: October 2025
- Summary: Features eight recommendations on the management of category I, II, and III fetal heart rate tracings, and adjunct modalities for interpretation of fetal heart rate monitoring.
Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Emergency Cardiovascular Care
- Society: American Heart Association (AHA)
- Published: October 2025
- Summary: This 12-part guideline features sections on neonatal resuscitation, pediatric and adult basic life support, post-cardiac arrest care, and more.
We make finding clinical practice guidelines and consensus statements easy. Simply head to our guidelines search page where you can search by keyword, specialty, society, or topic.
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