Nursing Perspectives
SEEING THE WOOD FOR THE TREES: 20 YEARS OF THE COCHRANE COLLABORATION Naomi K. Young, MA, BSc, RGN
N
THE OFFICIAL JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF GASTROENTEROLOGY NURSES AND ASSOCIATES, INC. AND THE CANADIAN
urses form the world’s largest healthcare professional workforce, but we are still a long way from having all the information we need to give the best care. This year, the Cochrane Collaboration celebrates 20 years since its launch in Oxford, England. Later in 1993, additional centers were established in Canada and Baltimore, MD. Cochrane is an international nonprofit and independent organization, dedicated to making up-to-date, accurate information about the effects of healthcare readily available worldwide. It produces and disseminates systematic reviews of healthcare interventions and promotes the search for evidence. From its very beginnings, Cochrane embraced an interdisciplinary spirit, involving midwives and nurses. Over the last 20 years, great advances have been made in nursing across the world, in no small measure because of the work of Cochrane and other pioneers of evidence-based healthcare. A key milestone was the launch of the Cochrane Nursing Care Network (later renamed the Cochrane Nursing Care Field [CNCF]) in 2009, significantly, at the first Cochrane Colloquium to be held in Asia. The CNCF’s membership has already grown to 1,000 across 25 countries, making it one of the largest, most geographically inclusive and fastest growing branches of Cochrane. The mission of the CNCF is to improve health outcomes through increasing the use of the Cochrane Library by nurses. It engages nurses delivering, leading, or researching nursing care with the Cochrane Collaboration and supports the Collaboration in providing an evidence base for nursing care. The open-access Cochrane Library is an invaluable resource and currently contains 867 reviews relating directly to gastroenterology, from surgery to medicine and common conditions (e.g., duodenal ulcers) to rarer diseases (e.g., short bowel syndrome). Examples of reviews of interest to nursing include Preoperative Nutrition Support in Patients Undergoing Gastrointestinal Surgery (Burden, Todd, Hill, & Lal, 2012) and Percutaneous
SOCIETY OF GASTROENTEROLOGY
DEDICATED TO THE SAFE AND EFFECTIVE
About the author: Naomi K. Young, MA, BSc, RGN, is Research Staff Nurse, Cambridge (UK) National Institute of Health Research (NIHR)/Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Facility (CRF), Cambridge, England.
PRACTICE OF GASTROENTEROLOGY AND
The author declares no conflict of interest.
ENDOSCOPY NURSING
DOI: 10.1097/SGA.0000000000000006
NURSES AND ASSOCIATES
VOLUME 36
|
NUMBER 6
|
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013
453
Copyright © 2013 Society of Gastroenterology Nurses and Associates. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited
GNJ-D-13-00087.indd 453
22/11/13 12:01 PM
Nursing Perspectives
Endoscopic Gastrostomy Versus Nasogastric Tube Feeding for Adults With Swallowing Disturbances (Gomes et al., 2012), and the list is growing. As a nurse specializing in upper gastrointestinal conditions, I am particularly keenly awaiting the review of Antacids and Lifestyle Advice for Reflux Oesophagitis (Moayyedi, Preston, & Donnellan, 2001), which will enable me to give my patients advice based on a rigorous and quality-assured synthesis of current evidence. The CNCF consists of six core groups, all aiming to inform and enhance nursing care. Membership is free and the Web site contains a wealth of information including podcasts and digests of the latest evidence. Nurses who undertake the majority of direct patient care are often the professionals best placed to implement and promote evidence-based practice. The CNCF aims to construct clear links between the development of guidelines and their translation into the policies of health service providers. It believes in a collaborative model of healthcare, in which the best evidence is made accessible to patients and lay caregivers as well as professionals.
The CNCF offers both an opportunity and a challenge to nurses to engage with the search for evidence and to take responsibility to initiate and monitor its application on the ground. In a world in which useful knowledge sometimes seems to be lost amid everincreasing data, Cochrane and its famous “forest plots” offer one of the best ways to “see the wood for the trees.”
REFERENCES Burden, S., Todd, C., Hill, J., & Lal, S. (2012). Pre-operative nutrition support in patients undergoing gastrointestinal surgery. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (11), CD008879. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD008879.pub2. Gomes, C. A. R., Lustosa, S. A. S., Matos, D., Andriolo, R. B., Waisberg, D. R., & Waisberg, J. (2012). Percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy versus nasogastric tube feeding for adults with swallowing disturbances. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (3), CD008096. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD008096.pub3. Moayyedi, P., Preston, C., & Donnellan, C. (2001). Antacids and lifestyle advice for reflux oesophagitis and endoscopy negative reflux disease. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (4), CD003501. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD003501.
454 Copyright © 2013 Society of Gastroenterology Nurses and Associates
Gastroenterology Nursing
Copyright © 2013 Society of Gastroenterology Nurses and Associates. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited
GNJ-D-13-00087.indd 454
22/11/13 12:01 PM
SEEING THE WOOD FOR THE TREES: 20 YEARS OF THE COCHRANE COLLABORATION Naomi K. Young, MA, BSc, RGN
N
THE OFFICIAL JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF GASTROENTEROLOGY NURSES AND ASSOCIATES, INC. AND THE CANADIAN
urses form the world’s largest healthcare professional workforce, but we are still a long way from having all the information we need to give the best care. This year, the Cochrane Collaboration celebrates 20 years since its launch in Oxford, England. Later in 1993, additional centers were established in Canada and Baltimore, MD. Cochrane is an international nonprofit and independent organization, dedicated to making up-to-date, accurate information about the effects of healthcare readily available worldwide. It produces and disseminates systematic reviews of healthcare interventions and promotes the search for evidence. From its very beginnings, Cochrane embraced an interdisciplinary spirit, involving midwives and nurses. Over the last 20 years, great advances have been made in nursing across the world, in no small measure because of the work of Cochrane and other pioneers of evidence-based healthcare. A key milestone was the launch of the Cochrane Nursing Care Network (later renamed the Cochrane Nursing Care Field [CNCF]) in 2009, significantly, at the first Cochrane Colloquium to be held in Asia. The CNCF’s membership has already grown to 1,000 across 25 countries, making it one of the largest, most geographically inclusive and fastest growing branches of Cochrane. The mission of the CNCF is to improve health outcomes through increasing the use of the Cochrane Library by nurses. It engages nurses delivering, leading, or researching nursing care with the Cochrane Collaboration and supports the Collaboration in providing an evidence base for nursing care. The open-access Cochrane Library is an invaluable resource and currently contains 867 reviews relating directly to gastroenterology, from surgery to medicine and common conditions (e.g., duodenal ulcers) to rarer diseases (e.g., short bowel syndrome). Examples of reviews of interest to nursing include Preoperative Nutrition Support in Patients Undergoing Gastrointestinal Surgery (Burden, Todd, Hill, & Lal, 2012) and Percutaneous
SOCIETY OF GASTROENTEROLOGY
DEDICATED TO THE SAFE AND EFFECTIVE
About the author: Naomi K. Young, MA, BSc, RGN, is Research Staff Nurse, Cambridge (UK) National Institute of Health Research (NIHR)/Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Facility (CRF), Cambridge, England.
PRACTICE OF GASTROENTEROLOGY AND
The author declares no conflict of interest.
ENDOSCOPY NURSING
DOI: 10.1097/SGA.0000000000000006
NURSES AND ASSOCIATES
VOLUME 36
|
NUMBER 6
|
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013
453
Copyright © 2013 Society of Gastroenterology Nurses and Associates. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited
GNJ-D-13-00087.indd 453
22/11/13 12:01 PM
Nursing Perspectives
Endoscopic Gastrostomy Versus Nasogastric Tube Feeding for Adults With Swallowing Disturbances (Gomes et al., 2012), and the list is growing. As a nurse specializing in upper gastrointestinal conditions, I am particularly keenly awaiting the review of Antacids and Lifestyle Advice for Reflux Oesophagitis (Moayyedi, Preston, & Donnellan, 2001), which will enable me to give my patients advice based on a rigorous and quality-assured synthesis of current evidence. The CNCF consists of six core groups, all aiming to inform and enhance nursing care. Membership is free and the Web site contains a wealth of information including podcasts and digests of the latest evidence. Nurses who undertake the majority of direct patient care are often the professionals best placed to implement and promote evidence-based practice. The CNCF aims to construct clear links between the development of guidelines and their translation into the policies of health service providers. It believes in a collaborative model of healthcare, in which the best evidence is made accessible to patients and lay caregivers as well as professionals.
The CNCF offers both an opportunity and a challenge to nurses to engage with the search for evidence and to take responsibility to initiate and monitor its application on the ground. In a world in which useful knowledge sometimes seems to be lost amid everincreasing data, Cochrane and its famous “forest plots” offer one of the best ways to “see the wood for the trees.”
REFERENCES Burden, S., Todd, C., Hill, J., & Lal, S. (2012). Pre-operative nutrition support in patients undergoing gastrointestinal surgery. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (11), CD008879. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD008879.pub2. Gomes, C. A. R., Lustosa, S. A. S., Matos, D., Andriolo, R. B., Waisberg, D. R., & Waisberg, J. (2012). Percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy versus nasogastric tube feeding for adults with swallowing disturbances. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (3), CD008096. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD008096.pub3. Moayyedi, P., Preston, C., & Donnellan, C. (2001). Antacids and lifestyle advice for reflux oesophagitis and endoscopy negative reflux disease. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (4), CD003501. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD003501.
454 Copyright © 2013 Society of Gastroenterology Nurses and Associates
Gastroenterology Nursing
Copyright © 2013 Society of Gastroenterology Nurses and Associates. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited
GNJ-D-13-00087.indd 454
22/11/13 12:01 PM
