AAAL Fall Meeting November 21, 2013 Liz Dennett and Sandy Campbell And why should you care?

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

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.

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

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: Robotics/ 2. (robot* or "bi manu track" or mitmanus).mp or 2 4. stroke/ 5. (stroke or post-stroke or tia or cerebrovascular accident* or post-tia).ti 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 or and 6 and exp Clinical trial/ or randomized.tw. or placebo.tw. or dt.fs. or randomly.tw. or trial.tw. or groups.tw and 11

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

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

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, (1):

For more information… Koufoginannakis, D. The state of systematic reviews in library and information studies, EBLIP 7(2) e/view/17089/ e/view/17089/14046 LIS systematic reviews: reviews.wikispaces.com/Welcomehttp://lis-systematic- reviews.wikispaces.com/Welcome Social Sciences SRs – The Campbell Library Cochrane collaboration and library Chapter 6 of the Cochrane Handbook (how to do bible for SRs)

Questions? Contact info Liz Dennett Sandy Campbell