In order to mediate the contradiction between the high quantity and low quality of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) clinical research, to avoid blind research and waste of resources, and to promote the benign development of TCM clinical research, we proposed carrying out health research priority setting on the TCM clinical research. This paper defined the main content of TCM clinical research and briefly introduced the research status of priority setting methods. We described a five-step process of the TCM priority setting research: setting the research scope and plan, establishing the working group, mapping the research field, identifying priority research areas, reporting, evaluating and updating the research. It is expected that this area will receive the attention of relevant researchers, policy makers and research funders.
ObjectiveTo explore the items affecting the prioritization of clinical questions and to construct an evaluation scale for prioritizing clinical question of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) guidelines. MethodsLiterature analysis and cognitive interview were used to construct the pool of items for evaluating the prioritization of clinical questions of TCM guidelines, and Delphi methods was used to identify the items to form the evaluation scale. ResultsA total of 47 articles were included in this study, and the two rounds of Delphi questionnaires had a recovery rate of 72% and 100%, respectively. The mean value of the importance of the items in the first round ranged from 3.78 to 4.78, with a coefficient of variation ranging from 0.09 to 0.30, and the mean value in the second round ranged from 4.06 to 4.72, with a coefficient of variation ranging from 0.09 to 0.29. The evaluation scale for the prioritization of clinical questions of TCM guidelines (first edition) was constructed, which contains 13 entries in 4 dimensions. ConclusionThis study explored the items affecting the prioritization of clinical questions in TCM guidelines and developed a prioritization evaluation scale, which improved the lack of objectivity and interpretability of the current prioritization of clinical questions in TCM guidelines to a certain extent, and strengthened the transparency of the process of selecting clinical issues in TCM guidelines.