Literature Reviews

The goal of a literature review is to synthesize and interpret information from multiple sources including other reviews, meta-analyses, and clinical trials.

Similar to starting a study, a literature review often starts with a clinical question. For example, how beneficial are fluids for patients in sickle cell crisis? Or, how good are physical exam findings in predicting whether or not your patient has septic arthritis?

Depending on your audience, your methodology for compiling sources will vary. For most audiences, a narrative review will generally suffice. This will typically be non-peer reviewed articles or introductory textbook type publications. These require no specific searching methods. 

For more narrow topics or a more academic review, (eg systematic reviews) a more rigorous approach will need to be used.

For the basics on how to write a literature review, check out this article.

For a how-to on narrative reviews, check out this article

For introduction to systemic reviews, check out this article

For a deeper dive on methodologies in systematic reviews, check out this article.