Clinical Specialty Assignment | Homework For You
Assignment: Develop a systematic review proposal relevant to your current clinical specialty. The following guidelines should be adhered to in the development of your proposal. All writing should be supported with relevant, up to date and evidence based literature. QUESTION This should be the first thing on page one.
This should be related to your area of specialty and have a clear intervention and outcome. For example, ‘What is the effect of x (Treatment) on y (Outcome) in a certain population (eg, older people) ?’ The question needs to be clear and concise. BACKGROUND This section should have the following headings and content. Description of the topic/condition (1000 words) – You will review the literature on the area that you are proposing to investigate.
You need to show that you have read around the area and are familiar with the general state of the literature in the area. Description of the intervention (400 words) – You need to write about the particular intervention that you are focusing on. You also need to show an awareness of the general evidence in existence about the efficacy of the intervention you are focusing on. Why is it important to do this review (500 words) – In this section you will write about why the evidence needs to be collated in your proposed review. Why is your proposed review important?
You also need to write about how valuable SRs are in compiling all available evidence, reaching new conclusions. You should also say something about the different types of SR, eg, narrative review, meta-analysis, review of qualitative review, show an understanding of these and how they differ. OBJECTIVES You need to write the objectives of your proposed review. For example, ‘to assess the effects of antipsychotic medication on people experiencing psychosis in the community and inpatient mental health care’. The objectives should closely reflect the question and should be written using bullet points. METHODS This section should have the following headings and content.
Types of studies (250 words) – You need to outline what types of papers you would include and exclude in your review. For example, you may want to include RCT papers, case study analysis but exclude literature reviews and commentary papers. You must provide a string justification for the types of papers you will include and exclude. Types of participants (300 words) – You need to identify what types of patients/participants/sample you are looking for, and why this is so.
This is all part of your wider inclusion criteria. For example, you may only want to review papers that have sampled hospitalized patients or people with a particular illness. Again, you need to provide a solid justification for the sample you will use. Primary and secondary outcomes (100 words) – The primary outcome is that measure that you are most interested in, for example, rate of healing of wounds, incidence of an illness, cost of an illness, mortality related to an illness, education scores after an educational intervention etc.
Secondary outcomes are other measures of interest that you will examine. These should be presented using bullet points. Search strategy (400 words) – You need to write about the search strategy you will use, for example, what search engines will you target, what search terms will you use, what other non-journal resources will you search.
Data collection and analysis (800 words) – This is a substantial section where you need to show a clear outstanding of and planning for the following. – Data extraction, what data will you extract and how will you manage this?, you could give an example of a data extraction table, and write about the importance of effective data extraction using literature about this. – Risk of bias, how will you assess bias in the different studies you review? Write about how you propose to assess risk, showing that you have read about the tool you propose to use. – Methods of quality appraisal, how will you quality appraise, write about the method you will use. – Data synthesis and Summary of findings tables, how will you bring all the information together into a coherent whole? CONCLUSION This should sum up the main points of your proposal and be 250 words in length.
