Literature Review in Health and Social Care

Literature review acts as an important source of evidence for supporting practice changes. Critically evaluating literature considers the truthfulness of a research and the results, as well as application and relevance. However, simply accessing and using evidence from literature without a defined strategy presents opportunities for bias (Aveyard, 2014). Towards this end, a two-step approach has been identified. The first step entails conducting literature searches in databases for medical and nursing publications, such as PubMed. The search is conducted based on key words and restricted to publication dates and relevance. The second step involves evaluating the collected information. The search conducted in the first step present many references that may not be suitable for use.Literature Review in Health and Social Care The publications are evaluated by skimming through them with a focus on their table of contents, abstract, introductory paragraph since this would indicate whether there is a need for the publication to be read further or if the results should be discarded.

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Also, the evaluation checks the reliability and quality of the references to ensure that they are suitable for the intended setting and purpose. The third step would involve subjecting the publications that successfully pass through the second step to a critical appraisal tool designed for the specific study. The CASP checklist presents good tools for clinical studies, case control studies, cohort studies, randomized controlled trials, systematic reviews, and qualitative studies (The University of Queensland, 2020). Besides the mentioned steps, the specific sections of the publications would be reviewed with a focus on ensuring that each section presents the expected information. For instance, the title should succinctly reflect the content of the publication and stimulate the interest of a reader (Aveyard, 2014).

References

Aveyard, H. (2014). Doing a Literature Review in Health and Social Care: A Practical Guide (3^rd ed.). Open University Press.

The University of Queensland (2020). Literature Reviews: Evaluate and critique the literature. https://guides.library.uq.edu.au/research-techniques/literature-reviews/evaluate

Literature Review in Health and Social Care