Tuesday, July 28, 2020
July Summary of Blog Posts: NRC Plus - Citing References - Cochrane Reviews - Health Equity Online Book Club- Inside Coronavirus Animated
Wednesday, July 22, 2020
Anatomy of a Cochrane Review and How to Get the Most Out of It
The Cochrane
Cochrane Reviews are considered the Gold Standard for high-quality systematic reviews in evidence-based research.
Abstracts for Cochrane Reviews are indexed in PubMed with links to the full-text.
Cochrane Reviews include completed reviews and protocols (reviews in progress).
Consist of detailed, structured topic reviews covering hundreds of articles. Teams of Cochrane experts complete comprehensive literature reviews, evaluate the literature, and present summaries of the findings of the best studies, evaluating the evidence--so you don't have to.
Published by the International Cochrane Collaboration.
Anatomy of a Cochrane Systematic Review
Cochrane Reviews are highly structured and systematic, with evidence included or excluded on the basis of clearly explained quality criteria.
Every Cochrane Review contains the following parts (See sample abstract) :
Abstract
Synopsis
Background
Objectives
Criteria for Considering Studies for this Review
Search Strategy for Identification of Studies
Methods of the Review
Description of Studies
Methodological Quality
Results
Discussion
Reviewers’ Conclusions
Potential Conflict of Interest
For a quick overview of the review’s findings, look at the following sections that summarize the evidence:
Abstract - summarizes the objectives, methods, results and conclusions
Synopsis - a 100-word plain-language summary found directly beneath the abstract.
Reviewer’s Conclusions - an overview of the most important findings and discusses the implications for practice and research.
A Note before Printing a Complete Cochrane Review:
Be aware that the full pdf version of a review may be 80 or more pages and contain info not normally considered useful in a regular journal article (data, analyses, appendices, etc). The reviewers include as much information as possible about the evidence they examined, and exactly how and why they arrived at their conclusions. They try to make everything as transparent as possible so that others can do their own evaluation of the evidence, if desired. Most of us don't have time to dig in that deep.
Unless you love slogging through metadata, the structured abstract or summary version will probably provide what a busy clinician needs to know about the evidence. You may not even need to go further than looking at the abstract to answer your own clinical question.
Sample Cochrane Abstract (via PubMed)
Find the Cochrane link on the following Library pages:
Cochrane Library - Evidence Based Reviews [Direct link]
What are Cochrane Reviews and Why are they beneficial?
We all know about journal articles, so what are Cochrane reviews?
And why should I care about using them for evidence-based practice research?
A Cochrane review is a systematic review that has been prepared and supervised by Cochrane’s in-house editorial review team.
“It attempts to identify, appraise and synthesize all the empirical evidence that meets pre-specified eligibility criteria to answer a specific research question. Researchers conducting systematic reviews use explicit, systematic methods that are selected with a view aimed at minimizing bias, to produce more reliable findings to inform decision-making.” (1)
In layman's terms, the experts at Cochrane conduct research on a topic or question, gather the evidence, sift through it for biased results and then report their findings in one document.
I call these reviews “little nuggets of gold” because instead of you doing hours of research and trying to find all the articles, reviews, clinical trials and other materials that have been published on your topic or question, Cochrane experts have done it for you.
As an example, if the Cochrane review is published in 2016, then you don’t have to do research through sometime in 2016. You can rely on the Cochrane review to cover the available materials for this time period. You only need to find updates to your topic or question since 2016. This saves you a lot of time and provides you with reliable evidence based information. Another benefit is that these reviews have been analyzed for biases and reports that information in the results.
So the next time you need to do evidence-based research, try searching for a Cochrane Review - the gold nugget.
You will find Cochrane links on multiple The Ascension Wisconsin Library Services intranet pages such as
Cochrane Library - Evidence Based Reviews [Direct link]]
“Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.” Cochrane Library, John Wiley & Son’s,
https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/about-cdsr
Monday, July 20, 2020
What-the-Health? Online Book Club Raises Awareness about Health Equity
Monday, July 13, 2020
Inside the Coronavirus - Scientific American
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Inside the Coronavirus: What Scientists Know about the Inner Workings of the Virus that has infected the world.
Tuesday, July 7, 2020
Access to 2020 AORN Guidelines
- Note: single user license for this title.
- Please log out when you are done using it.
- Unlimited simultaneous users on StatRef.
Monday, July 6, 2020
Nurses Choice Recommended Reading - July 2020
July 2020 See what your fellow nurses are reading! Browse this month's round-up of the top 10 most read articles from Lippincott's prestigious list of nursing journals.
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Sunday, July 5, 2020
NRC Plus - How to tell the difference between Nursing Procedures and Journal Articles?
Question: How do I know if I’m looking at a nursing procedure vs. a journal
article in NRC Plus, and why should I care?
Answer: Nursing Reference Center Plus (NRC Plus) is an evidence-based point-of-care tool for nurses. It offers always current, evidence-based Nursing Skills & Procedures (with competencies) along with evidence-based care sheets, drug info, patient education, and other content.
NRC Plus includes the CINAHL
Complete database as an easy way to search for journal articles, when you
need to dig deeper. That said, it’s
important to understand what you’re looking at when you find “the perfect
document” in NRC Plus, because journal articles may not be current or
evidence-based.
Fortunately, NRC Plus gives several clues to help you decipher a nursing skill from a journal article.
Read more in this step-by-step tutorial with screenshots. [pdf]
Learn more about NRC
Plus:
Nursing Reference Center Plus Search Tips page
·
Helpful handouts,
videos and tutorials for NRC Plus
·
Includes info
about access NRC at home and via mobile devices
· How to cite documents and reference content from NRC Plus.
This short 3-minute video is on the landing page for NRC – Plus under the Take a Tour link in the middle of the page. [Requires Flash]. Short, sweet and practical!
NRC Plus Takeaway Guide (1-page handout)
Questions
or comments, contact Your Ascension Wisconsin Librarians:
Michele
Matucheski
Kellee Selden
Saturday, July 4, 2020
What is a Permalink? and why does it matter?
- share NRC documents or articles
- cite them in policies / procedures
- cite them in papers or
- web-based training
- or other venues
- or just want to revisit them later
- persistent links or URLs
- permanent links
- stable URLs
- DOIs (digital object identifiers).