Report of Workshop on systematic reviews and Meta-analysis

The objective of the workshop was to create awareness about systematic review and meta-analysis. The workshop was attended by 35 participants from different disciplines of MAHE and other outside institutions.

On October 4th, the workshop was formally inaugurated by Dr. H. Vinod Bhat, Vice Chancellor, Manipal Academy of Higher Education Manipal. In his address he emphasized the importance of secondary data obtained through systematic reviews and meta-analysis and its current need. He brief about the origin of systematic reviews at MAHE . He also explained about the changing trends in research with more focus on qualitative and mixed methods research.

The workshop was opened by a thought provoking session on Overview of Systematic Review by Dr. Ramesh Chandrababu, Lecturer, Dept. of Medical Surgical Nursing, MCON, Manipal. It was continued with a presentation by Mr. Anil Raj, Lecturer, Dept. of Medical Surgical Nursing on Development of a systematic review protocol & Framing a systematic review question. Formulating a search strategy and hands-on experience on Advanced Search Strategy for systematic review was taken in detail by Dr Baby S Nayak, Professor Department of Child Health Nursing, MCON Manipal. Dr.Prasanna Mithra, Associate Professor, Department of Community Medicine, KMC, Mangaluru briefed about Selection of studies and data collection (De-duplication and extraction of data).

The second day of workshop began with Dr Judith A Noronha, Head, Department of OBG Nursing & Associate Dean, MCON, Manipal on Assessing Risk of Bias. Mr. Ravishankar, Assistant Professor, Dept. Of Biostatistics, MAHE, Manipal gave introduction to Rev-Man & Meta-analysis and practical demonstration was done on using the RevMan software. Afternoon session started with Mrs. Shalini G Nayak Asst. Professor, Dept. of Medical Surgical Nursing, MCON, Manipal on writing the systematic review report & PRISMA Guidelines and finally interesting session was on Assessing the quality of evidence- GRADE approach by Dr B.Unnikrishnan, Professor, Dept. of Community Medicine & Associate Dean, KMC Mangaluru.

The program was concluded by distribution of certificates to the participants by Dr Judith A Noronha, Associate Dean. Feedback was given by the participants about the workshop that it was systematically planned and well organized. The program was coordinated by Dr. Baby S Nayak, Professor Dept. of Child Health Nursing, MCON Manipal.