Updating Evidence Summaries
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These questions and answers were developed from our Scientific Writers forums held in February 2022. Scientific Writer forums will be held each year, and this library of Q & As will be added to as topics arise. |
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Clinical Bottom Line
Q: Do I have to review the whole evidence summary or just look for new evidence?
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When summarising the evidence, it is important to describe and report key information from the paper. As a guide, this should include the purpose of the study; if there was an intervention, include a short description of what this involved and a summary of the key findings. For example, rather than just saying education was provided. What did the education look like? Was it a one-hour group session, 30 minutes or a one-on-one session? It is also important to report on the quality and any limitations of the findings. Well reported evidence-based guidelines will often report on the level of confidence with the evidence eg, a strong recommendation based on moderate quality evidence.
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Characteristics of the Evidence
Q: What information do I need to include to describe the included evidence?
We want enough information here to provide a good summary of what the study is. If it’s a systematic review, then we need to report the included study designs. This is important as it can determine the level of evidence for the systematic review. If possible, include the number of participants, and if relevant, a description of them. ie: children, aged 1-5 years.
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Best practice Practice Recommendations
Q: How do I know when to make changes to the Best Practice Recommendations?
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It can feel a little daunting making a change to developing a new recommendation for practice. That’s why we ask you to use track changes and comments so we can support or advise you on any suggested changes you make.
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Searching
Q: Should the search strings be placed in the technical development report? This can be very helpful
. We are aware there are a variety of ways scientific writers currently present their search strategy, and we are happy to accept the variations. What we’re looking for is to make sure all the keywords and search terms are captured so nothing obvious is missed. Standardisation in the reporting is something our team will discuss to have consistency going forward, mindful that different databases have different search requirementsYes. Please copy and paste your search string from PubMed in the relevant section of the technical development report and make sure you include any filters applied.
Q: What type of evidence should I include? I usually try to only include systematic reviews, randomized controlled trials and clinical practice guidelines.
The type of evidence included should relate to the topic and clinical question and how much evidence there is. Ideally, we want evidence summaries to be based on high-level, high-quality evidence like systematic reviews, and evidence-based clinical guidelines. However, not every topic has these types of evidence, so we need to work our way down the evidence pyramid and include the best available evidence. We try to refrain from including literature reviews and scoping reviews, often because a comprehensive search or critical appraisal has not been conducted. In such cases it is better to evaluate the primary studies for inclusion.
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Including studies Studies and referencingReferencing
Q: Do I remove a study just because it is old?
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Yes. It’s a great idea to read through the existing references. It is important to check if an included systematic review has been updated (eg, Cochrane reviews, will quite often have updates). We add the Cochrane database number to the reference so it’s easy to check if there’s been an update or not. Also, clinical guidelines can be updated, and often contain a weblink. Check the link to see if the guidelines are still accessible and referencing the latest version.
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We need to present the best available evidence, high-quality evidence, which also involves looking at the critical appraisal scores when deciding what to include. That means preferring high quality and moderate-high quality over low quality evidence. If you still have conflicting evidence, it is very reasonable to provide both, as we provide the best available evidence. When it comes to present the best practice recommendations, we factor in the conflicting evidence.
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Other
Q: I note there are discount for staff on training courses, are these discounts available for scientific writers?
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Creating an original evidence summary is possible with our Field Collaborator program. The JBI Field Editor together with the Expert Reference Group examine the field’s taxonomy and identify topics for development. A PICO framed question is formed and then allocated to a Field Collaborator who develops the evidence summary in collaboration with the Field Editor. It is possible to be both a Scientific Writer and a Field Collaborator. See our field collaborator webpage.