The Impact of Nutritional Supplements in Preventing Osteoporosis: Advanced Research Methods Assignment, RCSI

TOPIC:

The impact of nutritional supplements in preventing osteoporosis in elderly people.

ASSIGNMENT:

Develop a systematic review proposal relevant to your current clinical specialty. The following guidelines should be adhered to in the development of your proposal. All writing should be supported with relevant, up to date, and evidence-based literature.

QUESTION

This should be the first thing on page one. The question should be written in the format, ‘What is the impact of X (Intervention) on Y (Outcome) in Z (population)’. For example, ‘What is the impact of reality orientation on the incidence of falls in older people in residential care’. The question needs to be clear and concise.

BACKGROUND

This section should have the following headings and content.

Description of the topic/condition (900 words) – You will review the literature on the general area that you are proposing to investigate. You need to show that you have read around the area and are familiar with the general state of the literature in the area. Using the Reality Orientation example this could involve you giving some figures about the numbers of older people in residential care, older person health problems, fall incidence, and the cost of falls to the person, family, and service.

Description of the intervention (400 words) – You needs to write about the particular intervention that you are focusing on. So, using the above example on Reality Orientation you would write 400 words on what the evidence says about the use of Reality Orientation in relation to falls in older person residential care. You should demonstrate that you have read around the intervention. In-depth knowledge is not expected but you should show that you have read widely and that there is enough evidence to review if you were to complete a full systematic review.

Why is it important to do this review (400 words) – You will write about why the evidence needs to be collated in your proposed review and why your proposed review is important. You also need to write about what systematic reviews are as a methodology and the different types of systematic reviews.

METHODS

Primary and secondary outcomes (100 words) – You need to define what primary and secondary outcomes are, and clearly outline your proposed outcomes. The primary outcome is the measure that you are most interested in, for example, the rate of healing of wounds, the incidence of illness, cost of illness, mortality related to an illness, education scores after an educational intervention, etc. Secondary outcomes are other measures of interest that you will examine. Primary and secondary outcomes should be presented using bullet points. Using the example of Reality Orientation, the primary outcome would be the incidence of falls.

Search strategy

• You need to write about the search strategy you will use, for example, what search engines you will target, what search terms you will use and what other non-journal resources you will search.
• You also need to write about the types of papers you will use in your review. In this section, you should show that you understand different research methodologies (Quant, Qual, Mixed methods).

Data collection and quality appraisal (1000 words) – This is a substantial section where you need to show a clear outstanding of and planning for the following. You can use sub-headings.

1. Data extraction: you need to write about what data you will extract and how you will manage this. You should give an example of a data extraction table, and write about the importance of effective data extraction.
2. You will also have to go through each section of the data extraction table showing that you understand what each column means, for example, there will be a data collection column, so you will explain what data collection means in research, the same with sampling, etc. Plenty of research methods papers should be used in this part of the essay.
3. Methods of quality appraisal and certainty: you need to write about the method you will use to quality appraise the papers you select to review. You also need to write about the importance of quality appraisal and certainty in systematic reviews.
4. You should write about the type of review you propose to write showing an understanding of narrative review, meta-analysis, and qualitative review.

CONCLUSION

This should sum up the main points of your proposal in the conclusion, 300 words