Best Practices in Conducting Systematic Reviews in Medical Education

For more information or to schedule this course, please contact Nancy Allee <nallee@umich.edu>.

Systematic reviews are becoming increasingly important in the biomedical literature. This face-to-face course is designed as a train-the-trainer workshop for librarians partnering with research faculty in medical education. It will help medical educators develop knowledge and skills to conduct systematic reviews and to promote these skills to other faculty and researchers at their home institutions. The workshop will emphasize the role of systematic reviews in evidence-based health care and policy, the steps and processes for carrying out comprehensive and reproducible literature searches, standards for systematic reviews, and software tools for data management. In addition to providing instruction in best practices for conducting a systematic review, this interactive workshop will also provide an opportunity to learn more about constructing systematic review teams.

Learing Objectives

to become familiar with common types of systematic reviews in the biomedical literature;
to distinguish systematic reviews from other review types; to define the steps involved when conducting a systematic review;
to identify standards and best practices for systematic reviews, including development of protocols, plans for data management, eligibility screening, appraisal, and reporting findings;
to learn how to construct a team structure that best facilitates the completion of a systematic review; and
to compare and evaluate software tools and resources for managing the systematic review process.

Agenda

This will be an engaging and interactive, four-hour workshop focusing on best practice aspects of systematic reviews in medical education.

1) Introduction, key concepts and characteristics of systematic reviews, distinguishing types of reviews - 30 minutes
2) Elaboration of steps in the systematic review process - 30 minutes
3) Discussion of standards, protocols, and data management - 30 minutes
4) Navigating the gray literature - 30 minutes

Break - 15 minutes

5) Exercise in appraising a systematic review - 30 minutes
6) Exploration of team roles - 30 minutes
7) Comparative evaluation of software tools - 30 minutes
8) Wrap up & evaluation - 15 minutes

Facility Requirements

Facility requirements include an instructor workstation with laptop and projection for PowerPoint slides.

MLA CE Credits: 4

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