The Legal nature of guidelines of scientific societies in the light of the Polish legal system.

Introduction: The paper aims to establish the legal nature of the guidelines in the Polish legal system and the possible formal consequences of introducing such guidelines (litigation, professional responsibility) as well as practical implications concerning the method of treating patients.

Methods: Analysis is clarifying fundamental issues that largely determine the content of the study. The basic assumption is to analyze the legal nature of the prepared guidelines from the point of view of public law, i.e. from the point of view of the relations occurring between the state, as the primary public law entity, and individual, private entities, such as natural persons, legal persons, or organizational units without legal personality, i.e., to be more precise, e.g., the relations between state authorities and persons practicing the medical professionConclusions:Treatment guidelines fall outside the scope of the universally applicable law subsystem. Therefore, they do not constitute sources of universally binding law. 2. Furthermore, the guidelines do not constitute sources of domestic law, as the issuing bodies have no legal authority to issue them and to mould the legal situation of their addressees. 3. In the regulations shaping the rules of practicing the medical profession, both statutory and corporate (the Medical Ethics Code), the guidelines may constitute the basis for adjudicating on the professional (disciplinary) liability of a physician. 4. The guidelines may pose a barrier to the development of medicine, especially in cases where their issuance by ad hoc groups and the lack of updates lead to the consolidation of outdated clinical practice and inhibit the research potential generated from the bottom up.