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Review
. 2020 Dec 10:371:m4143.
doi: 10.1136/bmj.m4143.

The time to act is now: pseudo-systematic review

Nathan Ford  1 , Grania Brigden  2 , Tom Ellman  3 , Edward J Mills  4
Affiliations
Review

The time to act is now: pseudo-systematic review

Nathan Ford et al. BMJ. .

Abstract

Objective: To identify any medical or public health rationale for claims that the time to act is now.

Design: Pseudo-systematic review.

Data sources: PubMed.

Study selection: Studies that included the claim "time is now" in the title, with or without exclamation marks. No language or date restriction was applied.

Results: 512 articles were included for review. No relationship was identified between time to act and disease burden, severity, or specialty. Claims that the time to act was Christmas were almost entirely without basis. A clustering of claims that it is time to act in the first quarter of the year suggested a possible association with New Year's resolutions.

Conclusions: Now is as good a time as any.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form at www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf and declare: no support from any organisation for the submitted work; no financial relationships with any organisations that might have an interest in the submitted work in the previous three years; no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1
Time is increasingly Now. Claims made in the past 20 years. Data from PubMed
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

  • Waiting in healthcare: the time to act might be later.
    Baraitser L, Catty J, Salisbury L, Anucha K, Davies S, Flexer MJ, Moore MD, Osserman J. Baraitser L, et al. BMJ. 2021 Feb 12;372:n429. doi: 10.1136/bmj.n429. BMJ. 2021. PMID: 33579741 No abstract available.
  • Ist jetzt wirklich "Zeit zu handeln"?
    Stiefelhagen P. Stiefelhagen P. MMW Fortschr Med. 2021 Feb;163(3):34. doi: 10.1007/s15006-021-9646-8. MMW Fortschr Med. 2021. PMID: 33591511 Review. German. No abstract available.

References

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