Is the information in systematic reviews published in nursing journals up-to-date?

Session: 

Oral session: Understanding and using evidence (1)

Date: 

Monday 17 September 2018 - 11:40 to 12:00

Location: 

Carrick 3

All authors in correct order:

Tam WWS1, Lo K2, Khalechelvam P3, Seah J4, Goh S1
1 Alice Lee Centre for Nursing Studies, National University of Singapore, Singapore
2 JC School of Public Health and Primary Care, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
3 Singapore General Hospital, Singapore
4 Alexandra Hospital, Singapore
Presenting author and contact person

Presenting author:

Wilson Wai San Tam

Contact person:

Wilson Wai San Tam
Abstract text
Background:
An up-to-date systematic review (SR) is important for researchers to decide whether to embark on new research or continue supporting ongoing studies. The aim of this study is to examine the time taken between the last search, submission, acceptance and publication dates of SRs published in nursing journals.

Methods:
We first identified nursing journals and extracted SRs published in these journals from three databases. We evaluated the quality of the SRs using AMSTAR. We recorded the last search, submission, acceptance, online publication, full publication dates and other characteristics of the SRs. We then computed the time taken between the five dates. We used descriptive statistics to summarise the time differences; we used non-parametric statistics to examine the association between the time taken from the last search to full publication alongside other potential factors, including funding support, submission during holiday periods, etc.

Results:
We identified a total of 1070 articles through the database search. After screening for eligibility, we included 202 SRs in the analysis. The quality of these reviews was low with a median score of 3 out of 11. A total of 172 (85.1%), 72 (35.6%), 153 (75.7%) and 149 (73.8%) SRs provided their last search, submission, acceptance and online published dates, respectively. The median number of days taken from the last search to acceptance and full publication was, respectively, 393 (interquartile range (IQR) 212 to 609) and 669 (427 to 915). Moreover, the median number of days from the last search to submission and from submission to online publication was 167.5 (53.5 to 427) and 153 (92 to 212), respectively. No significant associations were revealed between the time lag and these potential factors.

Conclusion:
The median time from the last search to acceptance for SRs published in nursing journals was 393 days. Readers of SRs are advised to check the time taken from the last search date in order to ensure that up-to-date evidence is consulted for effective clinical decision-making.

Patient or healthcare consumer involvement:
The study was conducted by a group of researchers including an epidemiologist, public health researcher, nurse educator and staff nurse. The results provide useful information for evidence users to judge the reliability of SR results.

Relevance to patients and consumers: 

Clinicians, policymakers and stakeholders seek to use research evidence to influence policymaking, for whom systematic reviews have become an indispensable resource. It is important to ascertain whether the information published in the SRs are up-to-date. This study reviewed 202 published systematic reviews in nursing journals and found that the time taken from the last search to full publication was 669 days (~1.8 years). It is likely that new research studies were available during the time-lag and the results in the systematic reviews would be no longer up-to-date, thus affecting the decision making.