With an increasing focus on evidence-based practice in healthcare, it is important that nurses understand the principles underlying systematic reviews. Systematic reviews are used in healthcare to present a comprehensive, policy-neutral, transparent and reproducible synthesis of evidence. This article provides a practical overview of the process of undertaking systematic reviews, explaining the rationale for each stage. It provides guidance on the standard methods applicable to every systematic review: writing and registering a protocol; planning a review; searching and selecting studies; data collection; assessing the risk of bias; and interpreting results.
Nursing Standard. doi: 10.7748/ns.2016.e10316
Correspondence Peer reviewThis article has been subject to external double-blind peer review and checked for plagiarism using automated software
Received: 21 October 2015
Accepted: 15 April 2016
Published online: 10 November 2016
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