Systematic reviews are the quickest way to get the most information about what works in evidence-based practice. If they are available, they are the highest level of evidence because they combine the most rigorous studies together through a lengthy systematic review process.

"Given that most clinicians and public health professionals do not have the time to track down all the original articles, critically read them, and obtain the evidence they need for their questions, systematic reviews and clinical practice guidelines may be their best source of evidence." (Gopalakrishnan & Ganeshkumar, 2013, p. 9)

Another benefit is that they help create clinical practice guidelines by condensing the information to further support implementing the correct and evidence-based occupational therapy or other healthcare intervention.

One thing to be aware of is that systematic reviews can be biased, just as other research can. Ideally, the intensity and strictness of the process eliminates some of this bias but it can still be present depending on what interventions are reported and others that may be potentially left out.

One other downside is that they can over generalize and lead to difficulty with implementation. For example, the interventions may become so vague that you actually do have to go back to the original articles to understand exactly what the intervention looks like in practice.

In general though, they are a great resource for occupational therapy professionals and other healthcare clinicians.

So where do you find them?

As an occupational therapist, my first stop is usually on the AOTA website. They have a ton of systematic reviews that have been recently completed and they also are really applicable to OT practice.

For other healthcare professionals, or topics outside of that score, the next stop I head to is Cochrane Library Database of Systematic Reviews.

These reviews are very comprehensive but they do have a plain language summary at the beginning that saves a lot of time and energy. They also show you the PICO questions they use which can be helpful to remember when searching other databases.

Lastly, if there are not systematic reviews there, I usually look to PubMed and add the words "systematic review" or "review" or meta analysis" to my search terms. This way I can see if I am missing any that maybe were not as comprehensive as a Cochrane Review.

There may be topics that just do not have systematic reviews yet because there is not enough evidence to gather to create one or the evidence is not strong enough so the review is not very helpful. However, we have a lot of research coming out now so more often than not there is going to be one systematic review out there for the more general topic areas.

If you are looking to do a systematic review yourself, check out this easy-to-follow page on the University of Michigan's Library website.

Not a big fan of reading articles? Check out the OT Graphically Library where we used infographics and journal clubs to discuss updated evidence in occupational therapy.

References:

Gopalakrishnan, S., & Ganeshkumar, P. (2013). Systematic reviews and meta-analysis: understanding the best evidence in primary healthcare. Journal of family medicine and primary care, 2(1), 9.