Systematic Review Paper Research Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Systematic Review - Research Paper Example The article acknowledges that nurses are often so busy and sometimes may lack the skills and tools necessary to make research findings that are clinically relevant and methodologically sound. This reality notwithstanding, the article states that the key to achieving this crucial goal in the nursing practice is through systematic review of literature. It goes further to provide examples of professional groups that have done reviews which have been very critical in attaining evidence-based practice. A good example is review done by the Cochrane Collaboration in evaluating the effects of medical therapeutics. The article explains that nursing practitioners should be motivated to use as well as produce systematic reviews in order to achieve evidence-based practice (Rew, 2011). The attributes of systematic reviews in the nursing practice have been described in the article. Based on the definition of Meadows-Oliver (2009), the article describes systematic review as a synthesis of literatur e aimed at answering a research question which has a clear target and can be replicated. Identifying clearly targeted and specific research questions helps the reviewer to critically analyze and search for published sources that respond to research questions. Systematic review also involves delineation of each step of review process in order to enable other reviewers to verify and replicate the findings. In describing the attributes of systematic review, the article has differentiated it from integrative review by stating that the latter’s approach is the only one that allows for the diverse methodologies combination. However, the process delineated from for systematic review is the same as the process for integrative review, and many of the former have included publications with diverse methodologies (Whittemore & Knafl, 2008). The article has extensively described the rationale for conducting systematic reviews. It states that even though most nurses in the clinical practic e do not get enough time to engage in original research, they ought to comb the existing relevant literature in order to find evidence regarding the kind of practice that can best work for a specific patient care situation. This method has proved to be appropriate in identifying evidence. However, its critics argue that it is often limited in scope, tends to reflect the bias that is inherent in journals that the nurses have employed or nurse’s bias, and it also lacks a clear focus (Coffman, et al, 2009). The article observes that systematic review corrects these limitations and gives nurses more confidence regarding the evidence that they have obtained from the process (Rew, 2011). A systematic review of available research literature gives the reader an efficient synthesis of research findings concerning a particular topic under study. The article further describes the systematic literature review process; it is worth noting that this process is the same to that of the descri ptive research design. The process begins with formulation of the problem that is aimed at describing, synthesizing, and summarizing published findings regarding a particular problem or phenomenon in practice, and presents these findings in ways that answer specific research