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. 2021 Feb 10;21(1):98.
doi: 10.1186/s12909-021-02538-6.

A model six-month workshop for developing systematic review protocols at teaching hospitals: action research and scholarly productivity

Hiraku Tsujimoto #  1 , Yuki Kataoka #  2   3   4 , Yukihito Sato  5   6 , Masahiro Banno  7   8   9 , Emi Tsujino-Tsujimoto  10 , Yukiyoshi Sumi  11 , Ryuichi Sada  12 , Takashi Fujiwara  13 , Yoichi Ohtake  14 , Junji Kumasawa  15 , Haruki Imura  16 , Yoshinobu Matsuda  17 , Ryuhei So  7   18 , Tomoko Kagawa  19 , Takashi Yoshioka  20   21 , Yu Uneno  22 , Hiroyuki Nagano  23 , Mai Akazawa  24 , Takunori Hozumi  25 , Yasushi Tsujimoto  7   20   26
Affiliations

A model six-month workshop for developing systematic review protocols at teaching hospitals: action research and scholarly productivity

Hiraku Tsujimoto et al. BMC Med Educ. .

Abstract

Background: Research engagement contributes to the improvement of patient care. A systematic review is a suitable first scholarly activity because it entails summarization of publicly available data and usually requires neither rigorous ethical review nor research funding.

Methods: This study aimed to develop a model workshop for healthcare staff to acquire skills in creating systematic review protocols based on their own clinical questions at teaching hospitals. We used an action research method to create a model workshop at four hospitals in Japan from April 2015 to March 2017. To improve the program, we solicited reflections using participant questionnaires for each lecture and examined the quality of homework submitted by participants after each lecture. We administered a revised final version of the workshop at five hospitals from April 2016 to March 2017. We evaluated the participants' scholarly productivity related to these workshops. The observation period was a minimum of 2 years following the workshops.

Results: Most participants had never developed a formal clinical research protocol and voluntarily participated in the workshop. The action research was developed and implemented at nine teaching hospitals in Japan, including one university hospital. The study developed a model nine-step workshop curriculum: 1) Research question development, 2) Search strategy development, 3) Search strategy brush-up, 4) Exclusion and inclusion criteria development, 5) Risk of bias assessment planning, 6) Meta-analysis planning, 7) Subgroup and sensitivity analysis planning, 8) Planning the presentation of results, and 9) Presentation protocols. A total of 233 participants, including medical doctors and other health professionals, produced 414 research questions. Seventy-nine participants (34%) completed the workshop, and 47 review teams accomplished systematic review protocols. The participants published 13 peer-reviewed articles as a result of the workshop.

Conclusions: We developed a structured scholarly productive model workshop for healthcare staff working at hospitals. We found healthcare staff with clinical subspecialties were able to develop an unexpectedly high number of research questions through this workshop. Medical teachers at hospitals with prior systematic review experience could teach how to develop systematic review protocols using this model. Further research is needed to increase the academic productivity of such workshops.

Trial registration: UMIN (https://www.umin.ac.jp/ctr/), UMIN000017107 (4/15/2015), UMIN000025580 (1/10/2017).

Keywords: Action research; Continuing professional development; Scholarly activity; Systematic reviews.

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Conflict of interest statement

Y. Kataoka, Y. Tsujimoto, M. Banno, and R. So are the founding members of SRWS-PSG, which is a non-profit, crowdfunded, and managed group. By using a portion of the framework of this WS, they help their supporters in producing papers on clinical research, including systematic reviews. Y. Tsujimoto is one of the directors of Cochrane JAPAN (https://japan.cochrane.org/ja, since Jun. 2019). The authors declare that they have no competing interests. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

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