Manipal College of Nursing, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, organized the INDO - UK workshop on Systematic Review and Meta-analysis through the virtual mode from 22 November 2021 to 26 November 2021. This workshop was supported by the financial grants from SPARC & UKEIRI SPARC support programme.

The workshop began with an introductory session and welcome address by Dr Baby S Nayak, Professor and Head, Department of Child Health Nursing, MCON, MAHE, Manipal and the Principal investigator of the SPARC project from India.

Day 1: Dr Vishnu Renjith, Lecturer & Program Director, School of Nursing & Midwifery, Royal College of Surgeons, Dublin, Ireland deliberated on the first session of the day on the topic, ‘Introduction to Systematic Review and steps of the systematic review.” Dr Vishnu explained the importance of conducting systematic reviews. He spoke about the organizations that work towards propagating evidence-based practice such as EPPI- Center, Cochrane collaboration, JBI, center for Reviews and Dissemination, Campbell Collaboration and Centre for evidence-based management. He also explained about levels of evidence stressing that systematic reviews are placed at the top of the evidence pyramid. Also, he discussed briefly the different types of reviews such as narrative reviews, scoping reviews, systematic reviews and meta-analysis. He also explained the different steps of conducting a review by giving examples of published reviews. The session was concluded by clearing the doubts of the participants.

The keynote address was delivered on, “Value of Systematic Reviews in policymaking by Dr Mukdarut Bangpan, Associate Professor, Departmental Graduate Tutor Module leader: International Development EPPI-Centre, UCL Social Research Institute, London, UK. Dr Mukdarut Bangpan explained the values of systematic reviews in policymaking, the evidence–policy ecosystem frameworks and how the impact of systematic reviews in academia are measured.

The third session for the day was on – ‘Development of a Systematic Review Protocol’- by Ms Anupama D. S PhD Scholar MCON, MAHE, Manipal. Ms Anupama explained the different sections of a systematic review protocol such as title, author, the protocol steps to be followed etc. Each section of the review protocol was explained in detail with examples. She also demonstrated detailed steps of registering the review protocol in the Prospero database. The speaker cleared the doubts of the participants at the end of the session.

The last session for the day was on –‘Framing a systematic review question’- by Dr Sonia R.B D’Souza Professor & Head, Dept. of OBG Nursing, MCON, MAHE, Manipal. Dr Sonia stated that just like every journey starts from baby steps, a systematic review should be started by framing the research question. She explained in her talk about formulating answerable systematic review questions and discussed the question formation framework- PICO, the purposes of PICO, components of SR questions and also gave examples for SR questions. The session ended with the chat-based discussion activity along with the audience. The first day’s sessions ended with good comments from the audience. Around 102 delegates participated in the session. The session was moderated by Ms Sunitha Solomon Nagelli, Research Scholar, MCON, MAHE, Manipal; technically coordinated by Ms Monalisa Saikia,

Research Scholar, MCON, MAHE, Manipal and Dr Sonia R.B D’Souza, Professor & Head, Dept. of OBG Nursing, MCON, MAHE, Manipal was the faculty coordinator.

Day 2: The 2nd day of the Workshop began with a welcome address and open discussion by Ms Clarita Shynal Martis, Research Scholar, MCON, MAHE, Manipal, who was the moderator for the day. Dr Shradha Parsekar, Research Officer, PHESA, PSPH, MAHE, Manipal, delivered an informative session on ‘Formulating a Search Strategy’ with a LIVE demonstration. She explained different steps of formulating the search strategy like search process, formulation of search strategy, sources of search with examples. Dr Preethy D’Souza, Senior Research Fellow and faculty, IOE- Social Research Institute, London, UK, joined in for an elaborate Q&A session. All the participants appreciated the session. The session was technically coordinated by Ms Kallabi Borah, Research Scholar, MCON, MAHE, Manipal and Dr Binil V, Dept. of MHAN, MCON, MAHE, Manipal was the faculty coordinator.

Day 3 session began with an introduction of the resource person by the moderator of the day Mrs Seelia Peter A, Research Scholar, MCON, MAHE, Manipal. The first session of the day was on the selection of studies by Dr Prachi Pundir, Research Officer, PHESA, PSPH, MAHE, Manipal. Dr Prachi explained about steps in conducting a systematic review, what is study selection: screening, screening process, reference data management, exporting, importing, and documenting the screening process with an example. She also virtually demonstrated how to screen the studies in Rayyan software. Queries of the delegates were cleared at the end of the session. The second session of the day was on Meta-analysis by Dr Ravi Shankar N, Assistant Professor Dept. of Biostatistics Vallabhbhai Patel Chest Institute, University of Delhi.

Dr Ravi Shankar explained about meta-analysis, data required for meta-analysis, how to check pooled estimate, heterogeneity, fixed and random effect model and meta-analysis of prevalence studies. Dr Ravi Shankar virtually demonstrated how to conduct meta-analysis using RevMan software. Participants actively participated in both the sessions. Ms Joyce Sangeetha Henry, Research Scholar, MCON, MAHE, Manipal technically coordinated the sessions and Dr Binil V, Dept. of MHAN, MCON, MAHE, Manipal coordinated the sessions as faculty.

On the 4th day, the first session was on ‘Data collection’ deliberated by Ms Tenzin Phagdol, PhD Scholar MCON, MAHE, Manipal. The speaker explained about what data to collect, how to use or design data collection tools and how to extract the data. The second session was on ‘Assessing risk of bias’ taken by Dr Judith A. Noronha, Professor and Dean MCON, MAHE, Manipal. She explained the risk of bias and scales used to check the risk of bias, RoB tools were also explained in detail. The day ended with another excellent session on ‘Systematic review of Qualitative studies’ by Dr Sunita Panda, Lecturer, School of Nursing and Midwifery, University College Cork & Research Fellow in Trinity College, University of Dublin, Dublin, Ireland. Dr Sunita explained about the quality appraisal, data extraction, and thematic analysis, dissemination of the data and the challenges in detail. The session was moderated by Ms Henita Joshna Menezes, Research Scholar, MCON, MAHE, Manipal; technically coordinated by Mr N Siva, Research Scholar, MCON, MAHE, Manipal and Dr Sonia R.B D’Souza, Professor & Head, Dept. of OBG Nursing, MCON, MAHE, Manipal was the faculty coordinator.

Day 5: The moderator for day 5, Ms Jyothi Nayak, Research Scholar, MCON, MAHE, Manipal introduced the resource person, Dr Baby S Nayak, Prof & Head, Department of Child Health Nursing, MCON, MAHE, Manipal who deliberated on ‘Writing a systematic review report’. She explained PRISMA guidelines and reporting systematic review. She explained in detail all 27 items of the PRISMA checklist with examples.

A session on ‘Mixed-Method Approaches to Systematic Reviewing’ was taken by Dr Preethy D’Souza, Senior Research Fellow IOE - Social Research Institute UCL Institute of Education UCL Social Research Institute, London, UK. She explained in detail about Mixed-Method Approaches to Systematic Reviewing with examples.

Dr Baby S Nayak, Dr Preethy D’Souza, and Dr Judith A. Noronha joined in for an elaborative Q & A session. The session was appreciated by all the participants.

The concluding remarks of the five-day workshop was given by given by Dr Judith A. Noronha, Professor and Dean, MCON, MAHE, Manipal. Ms Meena Konsam, Research Scholar and student convenor, Manipal College of Nursing, MAHE, Manipal, proposed the vote of thanks. Participants actively participated in all the sessions. Last days sessions were technically coordinated by Ms Edlin Glane Mathias, Research Scholar, MCON, MAHE, Manipal and the faculty coordinator for the day was Dr Baby S Nayak, Professor & Head, Department of Child Health Nursing, MCON, MAHE, Manipal.