I just spent the last 3 days at a writing workshop in Hermanus, organised so that the PhD students in our department could spend some focused time working on our systematic reviews. I prepared the proposal in the days leading up to the workshop, and had the opportunity to refine it following a presentation to the group on the first day. Here are a few things that I learned during the process:
- The proposal, if well designed, is the blueprint for everything you do. If you take shortcuts with it, it will only take longer in the end
- Just because an author uses the same words you do, they may not be meant in the same context i.e. keywords alone are not good indicators of eligibility
- I usually take the conclusions of published papers at face value, but on critical review the conclusions are sometimes not based on the actual study results
- Critical appraisal tools really expose the weaknesses of published research (and all papers have weaknesses)
- The process takes longer than anticipated, and at some point you have to call off the search for eligible papers
I now have an article outline and am busy with the data extraction process. If I can keep to my timetable, I’ll have a complete draft by the end of August. Submission of a systematic review is one of my first objectives and will give me a baseline for for how I will plan my own implementation of blended learning in clinical education.