Developing a Comprehensive Search Strategy for the Systematic Review of Clinical Decision Support Systems for Nursing Practice

Abstract

The search strategy of a literature review is of utmost importance as it impacts the validity of its findings. In order to build the best query to guide the literature search on clinical decision support systems applied to nursing clinical practice, we developed an iterative process capitalizing on previous systematic reviews published on similar topics. Three reviews were analyzed relatively to their detection performance. Errors in the choice of keywords and terms used in title and abstract (missing MeSH terms, failure to use common terms), may make relevant articles invisible.

Keywords: Clinical decision support systems; Nursing informatics; Precision; Recall; Systematic reviews.