Nursing & Health Sciences

Systematic Reviews (SR) are highly structured explorations of literature on a narrowly defined question or perspective. Their goal is to provide measurable answers concerning treatment, policy or intervention in the clinical setting or at the public policy level

Key characteristics:

• a clearly defined research question and protocol (research plan)
• inclusion and exclusion criteria
• a rigorous and systematic search of the literature
• critical appraisal and bias assessment of all included studies
• analysis and interpretation of results
• an in-depth report

Systematic reviews are undertaken by a research team, not an individual.  The team approach facilitates rapid reviewing and reduces bias.

In the Library

CINAHL with Full Text   

• search on "systematic review" + "your topic and limit to the TI Title field

• indexes and provides access to the Detailed Abstracts for over 6000 reviews from the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 

OVID Nursing & Healthcare Journals 

• Search on  "systematic review" + "your topic  and limit to the Abstract or the Title field

ProQuest Central 

• Search on "systematic review" + "your topic and limit to field Document Title TI

Open Access Systematic Reviews

Meta-analyses are a subset of systematic reviews, a statistical technique for combining the findings from quantitative studies to come up with new statistical conclusions.

• Not all systematic reviews include meta-analysis, but all meta-analyses are found in systematic reviews.
• Systematic Reviews with meta-analysis are statistically more robust than the analysis of a single study, as they look at more subjects, have excellent subject diversity and have more effects and results to consider
• All included studies must be sufficiently similar for a meta-analysis to be valid.