Identification and analysis of randomised controlled trials in nursing: a preliminary study

Area of Science:

• Nursing Research
• Evidence-Based Practice
• Health Care Effectiveness

Background:

• The Cochrane Collaboration aims to provide reliable evidence on healthcare effectiveness.
• Identifying all relevant randomized controlled trials (RCTs) is essential for comprehensive systematic reviews.
• Nursing interventions require rigorous evaluation through RCTs to inform clinical practice.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the feasibility of developing a nursing contribution to the Cochrane Collaboration.
• To identify existing RCTs on nursing care for inclusion in systematic reviews.
• To evaluate the effectiveness of healthcare interventions through nursing research.

Main Methods:

• Conducted comprehensive literature searches of Medline (1966-1994) and hand-searched 11 nursing research journals.
• Identified RCTs and systematic reviews relevant to nursing care.
• Compared the sensitivity of Medline searches versus hand searches for three nursing journals.

Main Results:

• Identified 522 RCT reports and 20 systematic reviews on healthcare effectiveness.
• Medline search sensitivity for RCTs in nursing journals was as low as 36%.
• Poor indexing due to lack of research design information in titles/abstracts limited database sensitivity.

Conclusions:

• RCTs evaluating nursing care exist in both nursing and non-nursing journals, often conducted by nurses.
• These RCTs are vital for systematic reviews of healthcare effectiveness, including those within the Cochrane Collaboration.
• Hand searching nursing journals is imperative to capture studies missed by electronic databases due to inadequate indexing.