Report of the 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 institutions.

On November 4th, the workshop was formally inaugurated by Dr Santhosh K V, Deputy Director- Research (Technical), Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal. Dr Baby S Nayak, Professor and Head, Dept. of Child Health Nursing welcomed the gathering with a brief introduction of the chief guest. Dr Santhosh K V addressed emphasizing the importance of systematic reviews and meta-analysis and its current need. He appreciated the activities of College of Nursing in organizing such workshops. He focused on the importance of scientific steps involved in conducting systematic reviews.

Dr Anice George, Dean, MCON, MAHE, Manipal admired the efforts of organizing team and wished the participants for fruitful learning experience. Vote of thanks was proposed by Ms Sunitha Solomon Nagelli, PhD scholar, MCON, MAHE Manipal.

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.

The next session was by Dr Eti Rajwar, Research Officer, Public Health Evidences for South Asia, MAHE, Manipal on Development of Systematic Review Protocol.

Dr Baby S Nayak discussed in detail about framing Systematic Review Question/PICO in the next session. During this session, participants were divided into groups and asked to select a topic for their protocol development.

Post lunch session was on formulating a search strategy and hands-on experience on Advanced Search Strategy for systematic review by Dr Latha T Assistant Professor-Senior scale, Department of Medical-Surgical Nursing, MCON, MAHE, Manipal.

The second day of the workshop began with the session by Dr Judith A Noronha, Professor and Associate Dean, MCON, MAHE, Manipal on Assessing Risk of Bias which was continued by Mr Anil Raj Lecturer Dept of Medical Surgical Nursing, MCON, MAHE, Manipal on Deduplication and Covidence.

There was also practical session and group work for the participants. They were encouraged to work on the development of systematic review protocol on a particular topic of their interest.

The Afternoon session started with session on Selection of studies and data collection (De-duplication and extraction of data) by Dr Prasanna Mithra, Associate Professor, Department of Community Medicine, KMC, Mangaluru.

The last session for second day was by Mrs Shalini G Nayak Asst. Professor, Dept. of Medical-Surgical Nursing, MCON, Manipal on writing the systematic review report & PRISMA Guidelines.

On the Third day in the forenoon Dr Ravishankar, Assistant Professor, Department of Data Science, PSPH, MAHE, Manipal gave a comprehensive introduction to Rev-Man & Meta-analysis and practical demonstration was made using the Rev Man software.

In the afternoon participants presented a systematic review protocol, which was facilitated by Dr Baby S Nayak and Dr Judith A Norohna. The program was concluded with distribution of certificates to the participants by Dr Judith A Noronha, Associate Dean, MCON, MAHE, Manipal. In the feedback participants said workshop was systematically planned and well organized. The program was coordinated by Dr Baby S Nayak, Professor and Head, Department of Child Health Nursing and PhD co-ordinator, MCON, MAHE, Manipal.