South African primary health care allied health clinical practice guidelines: the big picture.

There was consistently-expressed desire for quality guidance to support better quality AH PHC activities around the country. However no international CPGs were used, and there were no South African CPGs specific to local PHC AH practice. The guidance gap was filled by non-evidence-based documents produced often without training, to deal with specific clinical situations. This led to frustration, duplication and fragmentation of effort, confusing nomenclature, and an urgent need for standardised and agreed guidance. We provided a standardised framework to capture perspectives on CPGs activities in other AH PHC settings.