Completing a systematic review is a big task. It might even seem overwhelming at the outset as you start to get a feel for the road that lies ahead. But the challenge is worthwhile. We write systematic reviews because we want to know the answer to an important clinical question. And because high-quality evidence can make a real difference for actual people.
A systematic review is often written by a team because of the wide range of knowledge, skills, and experience needed to do it well. The other good news is that there are a range of practical tools that have been developed over the years to make conducting a review quicker, slicker, and easier 🚀.Systematic reviews are highly structured and follow a standard process. The process can be broken down into a series of smaller and more manageable steps. So grab a chair, make yourself comfortable 🍿🥤 and let’s take a look at the main stages.
The seven stages are:
Scoping reviews are considered by many to be a type of systematic review, but the aims and methods differ in important ways.
Systematic reviews ask a targeted question about the effectiveness or the safety of an intervention. They assess the certainty of the evidence and aim to produce a single point estimate. Their results are sometimes used to inform policy. Scoping reviews, on the other hand, don’t usually contain a critical appraisal of the evidence. They often describe, rather than synthesise, the information they find. Their results might inform further research but they are not used to shape policy
How to get started with a Scoping Reviw
To inform a systematic review. The results of a scoping review can guide the choice of question and the inclusion criteria in the systematic review. This can prevent ’empty’ systematic reviews, i.e. reviews that find no eligible studies.Scoping reviews can produce a summary of what is known, map the literature and put it in the context of a particular time period, population, discipline or field.