title: Elements of a systematic review.
abstract: This paper examines the subject of systematic reviews from a nursing viewpoint. The history of the evidence-based healthcare movement and the major differences between systematic reviews and traditional literature reviews are discussed. The steps of the process used by those conducting reviews are examined in detail. These include structuring a research question, searching and appraising the literature, data extraction, analysis and synthesis, and reporting the results. It is this process that ensures reviews can be considered as a legitimate form of nursing research.
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Nursing, Adelaide University, Adelaide 5005, South Australia. judith.magarey@adelaide.edu.au
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Magarey
mesh_terms: D003625:Data Collection; D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval; D015201:Meta-Analysis as Topic; D009729:Nursing