Journal of evaluation in clinical practice
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The importance of systematic reviews (SRs) as an aid to decision making in health care has led to an increasing interest in the development of this type of study. When selecting a target journal for publication, authors generally seek out higher impact factor journals. This study aimed to determine the percentage of scientific medical journals that publish SRs according to their impact factors (>2.63) and to determine whether those journals require tools that aim to improve SR reporting and meta-analyses. ⋯ The majority of the journals do not mention the acceptance of SRs in the instructions for authors section. Only a few journals require that SRs meet specific reporting guidelines, making interpretation of their findings across studies challenging. There is no correlation between the impact factor of the journal and its acceptance of SRs for publication.
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This study aimed to evaluate the awareness, attitude, knowledge and use of evidence-based medicine (EBM) among pharmacists in Jordan. ⋯ In spite of the positive attitude towards EBM, this study showed numerous personal and institutional barriers towards implementing EBM in Jordan, which necessitate immediate action by all health care decision makers to formulate a national plan to overcome such barriers, and to further investigate the evidence that teaching, learning and daily application of EBM in practice can improve the quality of care and reduce the cost.
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The quality of the current literature on external validity varies considerably. An improved checklist with validated items on external validity would aid decision-makers in judging similarities among circumstances when transferring evidence from a study setting to an implementation setting. In this paper, currently available checklists on external validity are identified, assessed and used as a basis for proposing a new improved instrument. ⋯ This paper provides building blocks for the development of a new checklist for external validity. The next step is provision of empirical evidence for the checklist items to be selected, and finally, development and validation of a checklist on external validity.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative Study
Expected net benefit of clinical pharmacy in intensive care medicine: a randomized interventional comparative trial with matched before-and-after groups.
This study evaluated clinical pharmacy costs against drug costs. ⋯ The randomized interventional comparative trial in a small ICU patient group suggested the potential cost-benefit of clinical pharmacy on daily ICU drug costs. However, after matching, this benefit was attenuated. A final conclusion demands a larger randomized trial adopting a similar design with matched controls. Future research should include clinical impact of recommendations.
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Increasing numbers of clinical nurse specialists (CNSs) are working in outpatient settings. The objective of this paper is to describe a systematic review of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating the cost-effectiveness of CNSs delivering outpatient care in alternative or complementary provider roles. ⋯ Low-to-moderate quality evidence supports the effectiveness and two fair-to-high quality economic analyses support the cost-effectiveness of outpatient alternative provider CNSs. Low-to-moderate quality evidence supports the effectiveness of outpatient complementary provider CNSs; however, robust economic evaluations are needed to address cost-effectiveness.