IDENTIFICATION AND ANALYSIS OF RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED TRIALS IN NURSING - A PRELIMINARY-STUDY

Objectives-To describe preliminary work undertaken for development of a nursing contribution to the Cochrane Collaboration. To ascertain whe ther there are randomised controlled trials (RCTs) on nursing care whi ch need to be identified for inclusion in systematic reviews of the ef fects of health care. Design-Searches by Medline (1966-94) and by hand of 11 nursing research journals from inception to the end of 1994 to identify RCTs and systematic reviews; and a comparison of searches by hand and by Medline for three nursing research journals. Main measures -Total number of RCTs identified and number of RCTs published in nursi ng journals; the sensitivity of Medline searches; and aspects of nursi ng care evaluated by RCT Results-The work is ongoing and 522 reports o f RCTs and 20 systematic reviews of effectiveness have been identified so far. The sensitivity of Medline searches for RCTs in nursing journ als is as low as 36% for one journal and the lack of reference to rese arch design in the title or abstract was the main reason for the lack of sensitivity. Conclusions-There are RCTs that evaluate aspects of nu rsing care, and are published in nursing and non-nursing journals, and are largely undertaken by nurses. These must be reviewed in ongoing s ystematic reviews of the effects of health care (including those under taken as part of the Cochrane Collaboration). Nursing journals must be hand searched to identify these studies as the lack of reference to s tudy design in the titles and abstracts of nursing trials leads to poo r indexing in electronic databases such as Medline.