Quality assessment of systematic reviews or meta-analyses of nursing interventions conducted by Korean reviewers

Abstract

BackgroundA systematic review is used to investigate the best available evidence of clinical safety and effectiveness of healthcare intervention. This requires methodological rigor in order to minimize bias and random error. The purpose of this study is to assess the quality of systematic reviews or meta-analyses for nursing interventions conducted by Korean researchers.MethodsWe searched electronic databases from 1950 to July 2010, including ovidMEDLINE, ovidEMBASE, and Korean databases, including KoreaMed, Korean Medical Database, and Korean studies Information Service System etc. Two reviewers independently screened and selected all references, and assessed the quality of systematic reviews or meta-analyses using the “Assessment of Multiple Systematic Reviews" (AMSTAR) tool.ResultsTwenty two systematic reviews or meta-analyses were included in this study. The median overall score (out of 11) for included reviews was 5 (range 2–11) and the mean overall score for AMSTAR was 4.7 (95% confidence interval 3.8-5.7). Nine out of 22 reviews were rated as low quality (AMSTAR score 0–4), 11 were rated as moderate quality (AMSTAR score 5–8), and two reviews were categorized as high quality (AMSTAR score 9–11).ConclusionsThe methodological quality of published reviews on nursing interventions conducted by Korean reviewers was assessed as low to moderate. In order to use the best available evidence in clinical decision making, reviewers should conduct systematic reviews or meta- analyses using rigorous research methods.

Epidemiology, quality, and reporting characteristics of systematic reviews and meta-analyses of nursing interventions published in Chinese journals

“…This finding is consistent with studies suggesting that 88.5% of SRs performed a quality assessment, and 51.4% reflected the results of evaluation (Moja, Telaro, & D'Amico, 2005). However, it is inconsistent with the findings of a study of nursing interventions conducted by Korean reviewers who found that only 13.6% of the included reviews appropriately conducted the quality assessment of the primary studies, and only three of the 22 reviews linked quality to the interpretation of results (Seo & Kim, 2012). This significant improvement in the rate of quality assessments found in our study is worthy to note.…”

“…Study selection and data extraction should be performed by at least two independent reviewers, and if conflicts occur, consensus should be reached in order to increase transparency of SRs. Compared with only 13.6% SRs in Hyun et al's study (Seo & Kim, 2012), our study found that most (69.4%) of the SRs used screening for duplicate studies, which helps to minimize subjectivity bias. However, single authors conducted 7.2% of the SRs in our study.…”

“…Using the tool for Assessment of Multiple Systematic Reviews (AMSTAR), 75% of SRs of oral care interventions were assessed to be of low quality (Sequeira-Byron, Fedorowicz, & Jagannath, 2011), whereas 110 SRs of orthodontics were found to be of moderate quality (Papageorgiou, Papadopoulos, & Athanasiou, 2011). Twenty-two SRs of nursing interventions published by Korean researchers indicated that most of the reviews were of low-to-moderate quality (Seo & Kim, 2012), and the quality of 396 SRs of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) published in Chinese journals was low (Ma, Guo, & Qi, 2011). …”

Impact of librarians on reporting of the literature searching component of pediatric systematic reviews

“…There is ample literature assessing the quality of systematic reviews across many disciplines [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16], and a common theme that has emerged from a number of these studies has been the need for improving the conduct and reporting of systematic reviews. Many studies have advocated for and described various roles that librarians and information professionals could play on a review team [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26].…”

Sins of omission and commission in systematic reviews in nursing: A commentary on McRae et al. (2015)

“…Whilst not offering much in the way of detailed guidance on where nursing's systematic review evidence base was deficient, they highlighted a number of areas that are often poorly reported: the method of synthesis, how quality of included material was judged, and the relative weighting attached to discussion of strengths and limitations of a review (Polkki et al, 2014). Seo and Kim (2012) have shown that limitations and variability in the quality of reviews is not just a western phenomenon; with only 2 of 22 systematic reviews conducted by South Korean nursing scholars in journals rated as ''high quality''.…”