Evidence-based practice tutorial – Systematic Reviews: a brief overview

A systematic review is review of published literature prepared with a systematic approach to minimise biases (systematic errors) and random errors (simple mistakes). It includes information on materials and methods used in published literature; the search strategy and criteria for including trials should be transparent. A systematic review should, therefore, be reproducible and allow critical appraisal of the identified clinical trials. Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are most commonly include but rarely information is included which is derived from other research designs, if appropriate. Systematic reviews are most frequently carried out to examine the effectiveness of interventions. Occasionally they can be used to examine questions that are not clinically based e.g. how many patients currently use complementary and alternative medicine). Questions for systematic reviews are often very narrow to limit the amount of suitable information gathered when searching for literature.