What is a Systematic Review?

1. What is a Systematic Review? And why should you care? AAAL Fall Meeting November 21, 2013 Liz Dennett and Sandy Campbell

2. What are systematic reviews? • One outcome of evidence based healthcare • Helps to synthesize the evidence to provide the best patient care • Each systematic review follows an explicit, reproducible and rigorous methodology • Non-biased and comprehensive

3. Process overview • Starts with a clearly defined question using the PICO model (Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome) • Systematic search to identify all studies. Searches aim for comprehensiveness and are run on all relevant databases as well as grey literature sources. • Search results are screened (first in abstract form and then full text) to ensure they are relevant to the PICO and meet all criteria.

4. Process overview, cont’d • Included studies are critically appraised for their quality and risk of bias (done using standardized tools) • Results are synthesized in descriptive form or (if the studies are considered homogenous enough) the data is pooled in a meta-analysis • Goal is a more definitive answer than any single study can provide

5. Example Medline search • Ovid MEDLINE(R) In-Process & Other Non-Indexed Citations, Ovid MEDLINE(R) Daily and Ovid MEDLINE(R) 1946 to Present • Search date: Sept 18, 2013 • Results: 198 • 1. Robotics/ • 2. (robot* or "bi manu track" or mitmanus).mp. • 3. 1 or 2 • 4. stroke/ • 5. (stroke or post-stroke or tia or cerebrovascular accident* or post-tia).ti. • 6. 4 or 5 • 7. exp Upper Extremity/ • 8. (Upper extremit* or hemipares* or hemiplegi* or hand or hands or arm or arms or upper limb* or finger or fingers or thumb or thumbs).mp. • 9. 7 or 8 • 10. 3 and 6 and 9 • 11. exp Clinical trial/ or randomized.tw. or placebo.tw. or dt.fs. or randomly.tw. or trial.tw. or groups.tw. • 12. 10 and 11

6. So what? • Systematic search step of these reviews has transformed health sciences librarianship • Created new jobs, created stronger liaison links, librarians seen as a member of the research team, research publications • Started slowly but now many students are doing them as part of their thesis. Created a huge demand for our time

7. Knocking on your door? • Good chance if supporting areas where similar research is carried out multiple times, such as Librarianship, Education, Psychology, Sociology, Policy, Agriculture, Applied sciences • Probably not – Chemistry, Physics, English, History, Fine Arts

8. Training • Talk to a health sciences librarian – Health library associations offer training at the national and local level • Find someone to mentor you through the process the first time Fyfe T, Dennett L. Building capacity in systematic review searching: a pilot program using virtual mentoring. JCHLA, 2012 33(1):12-16 http://pubs.chla-absc.ca/doi/abs/10.5596/c2012-009

9. For more information… • Koufoginannakis, D. The state of systematic reviews in library and information studies, EBLIP 7(2) 2012 http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/EBLIP/article/view/17089/14046 • LIS systematic reviews: http://lis-systematic-reviews.wikispaces.com/Welcome • Social Sciences SRs – The Campbell Library http://www.campbellcollaboration.org/lib/ • Cochrane collaboration and library - http://www.thecochranelibrary.com/view/0/index.html • Chapter 6 of the Cochrane Handbook (how to do bible for SRs) http://handbook.cochrane.org/

10. Questions? Contact info • Liz Dennett (liz.dennett@ualberta.ca) • Sandy Campbell (sandy.campbell@ualberta.ca)