Abstract
BackgroundIn bioethics, especially nursing ethics, systematic reviews are increasingly popular. The overall aim of a systematic review is to provide an overview of the published discussions on a specific topic. While a meta-review on systematic reviews on normative bioethical literature has already been performed, there is no equivalent for systematic reviews of empirical literature on ethical topics.ObjectiveThis meta-review aims to present the general trends and characteristics of systematic reviews of empirical bioethical literature and to evaluate their reporting quality.Research designLiterature search was performed on PubMed and Google Scholar. Qualitative content analysis and quantitative approaches were used to evaluate the systematic reviews. Characteristics of systematic reviews were extracted and quantitatively analyzed. The reporting quality was measured using an adapted PRISMA checklist.FindingsSeventy-six reviews were selected for analysis. Most reviews came from the field of nursing (next to bioethics and medicine). Selected systematic reviews investigated issues related to clinical ethics (50%), followed by research ethics (36%) and public health ethics or organizational ethics (14%). In all, 72% of the systematic reviews included authors’ ethical reflections on the findings and 59% provided ethical recommendations. Despite the heterogeneous reporting of the reviews, reviews using PRISMA tended to score better regarding reporting quality.DiscussionThe heterogeneity currently observed is due both to the interdisciplinary nature of nursing ethics and bioethics, and to the emerging nature of systematic review methods in these fields. These results confirm the findings of our previous review of systematic reviews on normative literature, thereby highlighting a recurring methodological gap in systematic reviews of bioethical literature. This also indicates the need to develop more robust methodological standards.ConclusionThrough its extensive overview of the characteristics of systematic reviews of empirical literature on ethical topics, this meta-review is expected to inform further discussions on minimal standards and reporting guidelines.
Highlights
The overall aim of systematic reviews is to provide readers with an unbiased overview on specific topics discussed in the literature.[1,2] In the interdisciplinary field of bioethics, systematic reviews can synthesize normative or empirical literature as well as a mix of both
Systematic reviews of normative literature provide an overview of ethical issues, arguments, reasons, values, or norms surrounding ethical topics, and are mostly, though not exclusively, drawn from philosophical or generally conceptual articles.[3]
As an intermediary step toward the goal of developing such methodology, our current study aims at reviewing selected methodological features of systematic reviews on empirical literature on bioethical topics, as well as the reporting quality of the findings
Summary
The overall aim of systematic reviews is to provide readers with an unbiased overview on specific topics discussed in the literature.[1,2] In the interdisciplinary field of bioethics, systematic reviews can synthesize normative or empirical literature as well as a mix of both. Discussion: The heterogeneity currently observed is due both to the interdisciplinary nature of nursing ethics and bioethics, and to the emerging nature of systematic review methods in these fields These results confirm the findings of our previous review of systematic reviews on normative literature, thereby highlighting a recurring methodological gap in systematic reviews of bioethical literature. Conclusion: Through its extensive overview of the characteristics of systematic reviews of empirical literature on ethical topics, this meta-review is expected to inform further discussions on minimal standards and reporting guidelines
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