In the medical arts, the importance of review articles for doctors is growing dramatically. While most clinicians typically make notes in patient files and occasionally refer to case reports, few are aware of the significant role a review article can play. As a practitioner, your role is to act on the basis of the information you gather from your patients and then determine how that information can help guide your practice. You can learn more information about Wireless Home Intercom Systems Reviews
Ideally, your role is to use systematic reviews, which are unbiased reviews, to help inform your patients and the care they receive. However, when clinicians need to update their understanding about a specific topic and develop new recommendations for treatment, they often depend on review articles as a primary source. The importance of a systematic review lies in what has already been discovered, how those discoveries are presented and what role they will play in improving the health of the population. By identifying patterns in research literature and drawing on the findings, systematic reviews allow us to draw the best possible conclusions about treatment options and suggest the best course of care.
There are two common forms of systematic reviews: those that are conducted on journals and those that are published in peer-reviewed literature. Journal articles are reviewed by experts in the field based on published studies, while peer-reviewed literature is reviewed by individuals other than medical scientists. The imprecise term “peer-reviewed” does not necessarily denote impartiality, but the process has no scientific validity since researchers involved in the study cannot always agree on the results. Because peer-reviewed literature has a longer history than journals, it tends to draw on the more reliable sources of information.
The first step in formulating a good review for your practice is to consider the research question. One way to do this is to determine if the topic is new and if so, to see if any important research has not yet been published. It is also important to think carefully about whether the subject is controversial. If it is, chances are there have been few, if any, studies directly relevant to the topic. Therefore, if you feel the need to point out shortcomings or inconsistencies in the published studies, you must cite the shortcomings and inconsistencies in the way you explain them.
Secondly, you should also make an attempt to condense the volume of literature out of the available information into a single statement. As an example, let us say you are reviewing a volume of medical research literature on the link between diet and cancer. Instead of attempting to write a lengthy discussion on the relationship between saturated fats and colon cancer, you might prefer to condense the information to a sentence or two that speaks to the link between a high fat diet and colon cancer. In other words, you should try to make your review article shorter and more direct so as to better capture the desired meaning.
Finally, you should remember to consider the source of the information. You can easily correct any bias or inaccuracy by checking for the bias or inaccuracy in the underlying research articles. As an example, many researchers correlate obesity with diabetes, but this correlation is actually a symptom of a much deeper disease process. The best thing to do when reading review articles and meta-analyses is to check whether all the sources agree or disagree with the statement you are making.