Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way: Teaming up with Nursing Faculty to Research, Write, and Publish Systematic Reviews
3:05 PM - 3:21 PM
Objective: This paper describes the lessons learned by a new health sciences librarian who partnered with nursing faculty to research, write, and publish a systematic review.
Methods: The author, then a new science and business librarian at a regional campus of a public university, teamed up with an associate professor of nursing to publish a systematic review that analyzed the reliability, validity, and feasibility of tools used to screen for caregiver burden and strain. After an extensive global search of databases including CINAHL, EMBASE, and MEDLINE and a search of the gray literature, the librarian and nursing professor both reviewed more than 1,660 abstracts and together decided to retrieve 227 full-text studies. The Joanna Briggs Institutes’ System for the United Management, Assessment and Review package was used to appraise the final 112 studies included in the review.
Results: The systematic review, published in 2009 in the Joanna Briggs Institute Library of Systematic Reviews, proved to nursing faculty that a librarian can be an equal partner on a systematic review team. Nursing faculty now turn to the librarian for advice on their own literature searches, and they actively recruit the librarian to work on their systematic review teams. Being able to speak from experience about systematic reviews also adds to the credibility of the librarian among the undergraduate and graduate nursing students.
Conclusions: Taking a leadership role on a review team that evaluated a clinical topic proved to be both a challenge and a triumph. Both positive and negative lessons learned will be discussed.
Author: Kimberly J. Whalen, Assistant Professor, Library Services, Christopher Center Library, Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, IN
Beyond Searching: Practical Advice for Increasing Your Role in Systematic Reviews
3:21 PM - 3:37 PM
Objective: This case study brings together a decade of experience from an information specialist (IS) team supporting systematic reviews, guidelines, and evidence surveillance. While the primary role of the librarian is to identify relevant studies, this paper explores expanded roles including review planning, critical appraisal, search filter validation, and data checking and suggests strategies for increasing librarian participation.
Methods: As this IS team supports an expanding range of systematic reviews and evidence surveillance across hundreds of regularly updated topics, over time, the processes have been redesigned to improve efficiency while remaining systematic and transparent. As well as insight into the requirements of a search, involvement in early stages of protocol planning can supply a reality check on the scope and likely size of results and highlight inconsistencies in approach and reduce later complications. Search results can be collected in a way that facilitates efficient updating, and bibliographic management tools can supply prompts for critical appraisal in bespoke styles. Performing critical appraisal of abstracts gives a deeper insight into medical conditions and relevant study designs, which feeds back into search strategy design, demonstrates wider skills of librarians, and releases time for authors and editors. Subsequently, librarians can check adherence to protocols.
Results: Increasing IS involvement in the process of producing evidence-based reviews has enabled the department to expand the range of products it produces, while maintaining a rigorous approach to evidence identification. Performing critical appraisal on all search results and identifying errors frees up time for authors and editors to concentrate on summarizing the evidence. On a professional level, developing, validating, and publishing search strategies and using an evidence-based approach to service redesign has increased the visibility of the IS team internally and externally, and the expanded role of the librarian has opened up new professional opportunities.
Author: Sarah L. Greenley, Information Specialist, BMJ Evidence Centre, BMJ Publishing Group, Beverley, East Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Leveraging Librarians’ Skills In Searching and Critical Appraisal in a Systematic Review Collaboration
3:37 PM - 3:53 PM
Purpose: To describe a collaboration with a federally funded team of clinicians, epidemiologists, and other scientists in the design and execution of comparative effectiveness reviews on a range of health topics.
Participants/Setting/Resources: A large academic medical library with a proven track record in integrating librarians with extensive skills in critical appraisal and synthesis of the medical literature.
Brief Description and Methods: Due to the library’s strong infrastructure of training and reputation for successful integration with a range of clinical and research teams at this institution, the library was approached to collaborate with a multidisciplinary team in seeking and securing federal funding to form a center for systematic review work. As pivotal members of this team, librarians work in a variety of functions, including developing comprehensive literature searches, assessing abstract and article relevance, extracting study data into evidence tables, quality scoring, and contributing to the reports’ methods sections.
Results/Outcome: Feedback from the project team indicates librarians are valued team members and deliver consistently high-quality work. As the librarians have grown in this collaboration, their involvement has also recently expanded to include authoring other sections of the reviews.
Conclusions: This close collaboration on a range of review projects has allowed the librarians to continue to apply and further develop skills in literature searching as well critical appraisal and synthesis of research, providing key contributions to a range of tasks in conducting large systematic review projects.
Authors: Rebecca Jerome, Program Director; Rachel Walden, Librarian, Eskind Biomedical Library; J. Nikki McKoy, Assistant Director; Melissa McPheeters, Co-Director; Katherine Hartmann, Co-Director, Evidence-Based Practice Center; Nunzia Giuse, AHIP, FMLA, Assistant Vice Chancellor, Knowledge Management; Director, Eskind Biomedical Library; and Professor, Department of Biomedical Informatics and Department of Medicine, Knowledge Management and Eskind Biomedical Library; Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN
Librarians as Members of an Interdisciplinary Team Conducting a Systematic Review of Pharmacists' Impact on Direct Patient Care
3:53 PM - 4:09 PM
Objective: To describe librarians’ participation in an interdisciplinary team and in the creation of search methods to conduct a comprehensive systematic review to determine the value and impact of pharmacists on direct patient care.
Methods: Two librarians who are liaisons to a college of pharmacy were recruited as part of an interdisciplinary team to conduct a systematic review of the value and impact of pharmacists on direct patient care in the United States. The team consisted of pharmacy faculty, nurses, physicians, social scientists, and librarians. In consultation with the team, who provided key search terms, the librarians developed several search strategies for thirteen different databases, including PubMED, OvidSP/MEDLINE, ABI Inform, Health Business Fulltext Elite, Academic Search Complete, International Pharmaceutical Abstracts, PsycINFO, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, National Guideline Clearinghouse, DARE, ClinicalTrials.gov, LexisNexis, and Google Scholar. In addition to database searching, key articles recommended by the team were also included, and their citations were manually reviewed for inclusion. The initial search was repeated at three- and six-month intervals to include articles published up to January 2009.
Results: A total of 56,573 articles were identified from the database searches. The librarians excluded any foreign studies, duplicate references, book chapters, letters, editorials, and meeting abstracts. After excluding these items, the team conducted another exclusion assessment and eliminated items that did not meet study inclusion criteria including (for example, studies that did not address pharmacy-related outcomes). Items identified for review after the complete exclusion process totaled 298 articles. Outcomes identified by the team included therapeutic, safety, humanistic, and economic implications.
Conclusions: As collaborators on an interdisciplinary team, librarians successfully demonstrated their expert knowledge of the literature search process. The librarians were central to the success of the systematic review. Key to this success was the inclusion of librarians in all aspects of planning and executing the search process.
Authors: Jennifer R. Martin, Assistant Librarian; Sandra S. Kramer, Assistant Director, Services, Arizona Health Sciences Library; Marie A. Chisholm-Burns, Professor; Jeannie K. Lee, Clinical Assistant Professor; Christina A. Spivey, Research Coordinator; Marion K. Slack, Professor; Richard N. Herrier, Clinical P