Training and Webinars

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The value of rapid reviews in informing health care decisions is more evident since the onset of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This webinar will discuss the methods and results of Priority III, a Health Research Board (HRB, Ireland) funded project conducted to address the absence of high-quality evidence underpinning some decisions about how we plan, do and share rapid reviews. Priority III used a modified James Lind Alliance priority-setting partnership to determine the top 10 unanswered research questions about how we plan, do and share rapid reviews. The project was conducted in collaboration with patients, the public, reviewers, researchers, clinicians, policymakers and funders with a strong focus on ensuring the inclusion of stakeholders from countries of different income levels.

Prof. Declan Devane is the Director of Evidence Synthesis Ireland and Director of Cochrane Ireland. He holds the Chair in Midwifery and is Deputy Dean of the College of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences at NUI Galway. He is also Scientific Director of the HRB-Trials Methodology Research Network, and Principal Investigator with the INFANT – Irish Centre for Fetal and Neonatal Translational Research. Declan’s methodological areas of expertise are randomised trials, systematic reviews and meta-analyses and much of his career has focussed on building capacity in this area.

Dr Claire Beecher is postdoctoral researcher on the Priority 3 project, a Priority Setting Partnership to identify and prioritise unanswered questions in the methodology of rapid reviews. Claire is also working on the COS-UTI core outcome set for interventions for the treatment of uncomplicated urinary tract infection in adults with the HRB Trials Methodology Research Network.

This workshop will be held over four mornings and provides authors at the beginning of the systematic review process, with an in-depth understanding of how reviews are structured. It offers an insight into the development of a protocol, introducing participants to methodology, search methods, data extraction and meta-analysis. This workshop also includes an introduction to RevMan software and its use during protocol development.

Date: 24th, 28th, 31st January & 4th February 2022

Time: 10.00 am – 1.00 pm

Places: 25 available for individuals who are resident on the island of Ireland

Skill level: Introductory

Target Audience: Healthcare professionals, academics, researchers, decision-makers and Evidence Synthesis Ireland fellows who have identified a review topic and are ready to begin working on their protocol.

Prerequisites: Have a basic knowledge of health research. Are interested in learning more on the methodology of a review. Participants are requested to install the RevMan software and bring their laptop to the workshop.

Learning outcomes: In this course participants will be enabled to:

• Understand the basic principles of a systematic review
• Identify the scope of their review
• Understand search methods and apply these methods to their search strategy
• Apply the criteria for selecting studies
• Understand the principles of creating a data collection form and data extraction
• Attain a basic understanding of principles of meta-analysis
• Identify heterogeneity and understand the methods for assessing and addressing it.

Teaching strategies: The workshop will consist of a mixture of short presentations, led by members of the Cochrane Ireland teaching faculty covering each of the stages of developing a systematic review protocol, small group activities and plenary discussions, providing participants with the opportunity to develop and refine their protocol.

Facilitators

Prof. Declan Devane, Director of ESI & Cochrane Ireland, Professor of Midwifery, School of Nursing and Midwifery, NUI Galway.

Dr Julie Broderick, Associate Professor in Physiotherapy, School of Medicine, Trinity College Dublin.

This workshop will be held over four mornings and provides authors at the beginning of the systematic review process, with an in-depth understanding of how reviews are structured. It offers an insight into the development of a protocol, introducing participants to methodology, search methods, data extraction and meta-analysis. This workshop also includes an introduction to RevMan software and its use during protocol development.

Date: 24th, 28th, 31st January & 4th February 2022

Time: 10.00 am – 1.00 pm

Places: 25 available for individuals who are resident on the island of Ireland

Skill level: Introductory

Target Audience: Healthcare professionals, academics, researchers, decision-makers and Evidence Synthesis Ireland fellows who have identified a review topic and are ready to begin working on their protocol.

Prerequisites: Have a basic knowledge of health research. Are interested in learning more on the methodology of a review. Participants are requested to install the RevMan software and bring their laptop to the workshop.

Learning outcomes: In this course participants will be enabled to:

• Understand the basic principles of a systematic review
• Identify the scope of their review
• Understand search methods and apply these methods to their search strategy
• Apply the criteria for selecting studies
• Understand the principles of creating a data collection form and data extraction
• Attain a basic understanding of principles of meta-analysis
• Identify heterogeneity and understand the methods for assessing and addressing it.

Teaching strategies: The workshop will consist of a mixture of short presentations, led by members of the Cochrane Ireland teaching faculty covering each of the stages of developing a systematic review protocol, small group activities and plenary discussions, providing participants with the opportunity to develop and refine their protocol.

Facilitators

Prof. Declan Devane, Director of ESI & Cochrane Ireland, Professor of Midwifery, School of Nursing and Midwifery, NUI Galway.

Dr Julie Broderick, Associate Professor in Physiotherapy, School of Medicine, Trinity College Dublin.

Pre-requisite: A basic understanding of searching and using databases

Background: One of the key features of all evidence synthesis is to conduct a systematic search strategy. Systematic literature searching requires that we plan and run searches in a way that ensures clarity, validity and reliability. Documenting the searching process is vital to ensure transparency and reproducibility.

Aim: This workshop provides attendees with the knowledge and skills to conduct a basic systematic search of the literature including running searches on key databases, experimenting with search filters and exploring supplementary searching.

Learning Outcomes: In this course participants will be enabled to:

• Design a basic systematic search strategy
• Use study-design search filters
• Explore supplementary search techniques
• Report the search methods

Date: 11th February 2022

Time: 09:00 – 13:30

Places: 30 available for individuals who are resident in Ireland & Northern Ireland

Skill Level: Introductory / Intermediate

Target Audience: Healthcare professionals, academics, researchers, decision makers, librarians, information specialists, and Evidence Synthesis Ireland fellows and teaching faculty who would like to learn more about systematic searching.

Teaching Strategies: The workshop will consist of a mixture of short presentations, small group activities with practical exercises. A short reading list/activity list will be sent to enrolled attendees in advance of the session. The number of participants for the course is limited to 30.

Facilitator: Mike Smalle,  Academic Skills Librarian, NUI Galway Library

This workshop  will be held over four mornings and provides authors, actively involved in conducting a systematic review, with confidence to assess a wide range of data types. It offers an insight into more complex methods of meta-analysis. This workshop also includes an overview on how to produce a summary of findings table for use in your review.

Date: 14th, 15th, 23rd, 24th March 2022

Time: 10.00 am – 1.00 pm

Places: 20 places available for individuals who are resident on the island of Ireland

Background

Health care policy and practice decisions should be based on a synthesis of the global body of evidence rather than relying on individual studies. Cochrane Ireland and Evidence Synthesis Ireland promote evidence based healthcare policy and practice by supporting high quality, relevant systematic reviews and other synthesised research evidence.

Aim

This workshop provides authors, actively involved in conducting a systematic review, with confidence to assess a wide range of data types. It offers an insight into more complex methods of meta-analysis.

Learning outcomes

In this course participants will be enabled to:

• Understand how to identify, extract and analyse dichotomous and continuous data
• Understand more complex meta-analysis methods including use of Generic Inverse Variance Meta-analysis
• Understand principles of analysis of multi-arm trials, cluster and cross-over trial designs

Teaching strategies

This course consists of online workshops with of a mixture of short presentations, small group activities and practical demonstrations using Cochrane software (RevMan 5.4.1). In addition, participants will have access to Cochrane Interactive Learning modules and will be required to complete a set of modules prior to workshops. Access to the Cochrane Interactive Learning modules will be made available for4 weeks before and 4 weeks after the workshop and will be free of charge thanks to the support of Cochrane Training.

Facilitators

Prof. Valerie Smith, Trinity College Dublin

Dr Nuala Livingstone, Cochrane

Course content

• Data Collection overview
• Dichotomous Data: Extraction and Analysis
• Continuous Data: Extraction and Analysis
• Standardised Mean Difference
• Introduction to Heterogeneity – heterogeneity statistics, fixed and random effects models, dealing with heterogeneity
• Sensitivity Analysis
• Generic Inverse Variance Meta-analysis: overview
• Multiplicity Issues: Multi-arm trials, Cluster and Cross-over designs
• Practical demonstration in RevMan

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For many clinical conditions there may be more than two competing interventions. In a systematic review, network meta-analysis is a statistical option for comparing three or more interventions by combining direct and indirect estimates in a single analysis. This approach is more complex than standard meta-analysis and requires additional assumptions. This webinar will present network meta-analysis and discuss what it is, how they are often presented, what to look for and how to understand them. Exemplar systematic reviews including network meta-analyses will be included in order to provide suitable examples.

Dr Kerry Dawn leads the Methods Support Unit (MSU) in the Editorial and Methods Department in Cochrane. She has a statistical background and has worked as a trial statistician and undertaken systematic reviews with Cochrane and the Liverpool Reviews and Implementation group. Her methodological work and PhD focussed on selective outcome reporting and has expanded to improving methods and reporting in trials and systematic reviews. The MSU provides methodological and statistical advice on Cochrane protocols, reviews and updates. Kerry also delivers training on common statistical errors and works with the Statistical Methods Group on developing guidance relating to the implementation of statistical methods in Cochrane Reviews. She works part-time and is based in Liverpool, UK.

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Dr Andrew Booth, Reader at the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR), University of Sheffield, has been a systematic review methodologist for over 25 years. He specializes in qualitative, mixed methods, realist and rapid reviews. Andrew has conducted published international QES in maternal care topics such as postnatal depression and attitudes to facility-based delivery. Andrew is a co-developer of Best Fit Framework Synthesis, one of the widely used methods of qualitative evidence synthesis. He is a technical consultant to the WHO Health Evidence Network evidence reviews. Andrew has been a co-convenor of the Cochrane Qualitative and Implementation Methods Group (CQIMG) for over fifteen years and is a member of the GRADE-CERQual core development team. He has co-authored the Cochrane Handbook chapter on Qualitative Evidence. Together with colleagues in ScHARR he has been running an annual course on qualitative synthesis for over a decade.

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Scoping reviews are increasingly being applied as an approach to synthesise evidence. In this webinar, Associate Professor Zachary Munn will provide an introduction to scoping reviews, including an overview of the JBI methods for conducting scoping reviews. Scoping reviews will also be compared and contrasted to other evidence synthesis approaches, such as systematic reviews.

A/Professor Zachary Munn is an advocate for evidence-based healthcare and for ensuring patients receive the best care possible based on the best available evidence. His main work is as a systematic review, evidence implementation and guideline development methodologist. He is the Director of the Evidence-based Healthcare Research Division of JBI, Director of the JBI Adelaide GRADE Centre, Chair of the Guidelines International Network and an NHMRC Investigator.

This workshop will be held over two days and provides an opportunity for those who undertake their own searches for evidence syntheses, and those how work with librarians/information specialists on the study identification, to learn more about the process of searching for studies for evidence syntheses.  It addresses many of the key aspects of searching for evidence syntheses, in particular how this differs from searching for routine clinical practice/everyday questions.

Date: 23rd & 24th June

Time: TBD

Location: Aishling Hotel, Stoneybatter, Dublin City *In the event that the workshop cannot take place in person, depending on public health guidance at the time, we plan to hold it virtually, via Zoom

Places: 25 available for individuals who are resident in Ireland & Northern Ireland

Skill level: Intermediate

Target Audience: Healthcare professionals, academics, researchers, decision makers, librarians, information specialists, and Evidence Synthesis Ireland fellows and teaching faculty who would like to learn more about the process of searching for studies for systematic reviews and other evidence syntheses.

Prerequisites: A basic knowledge of searching databases such as MEDLINE/ PubMed; An interest in improving their own search skills and/or understanding better how to work more effectively with their librarian/information specialist to identify studies for evidence syntheses

Teaching strategies

The workshop will consist of a mixture of short presentations, small group and plenary discussions, together with practical exercises.

Facilitators

Ms Carol Lefebvre

This one day workshop provides a brief overview of the development and use of three principal methods of qualitative evidence synthesis; thematic synthesis, framework synthesis and meta-ethnography. These three methods are endorsed as the methods of choice by the Cochrane Qualitative and Implementation Research Group and collectively they represent a versatile toolkit of approaches to handling qualitative data within systematic reviews. This workshop will offer experience of conducting all three approaches and the strengths and weaknesses of each method will be rehearsed and then demonstrated. Key references in methodological development and reporting standards will be explored against a backdrop of Cochrane methodological guidance and alongside exemplars of each type of research output. The workshop will allow participants to shape their own views of what method works best under different circumstances. Brief reference will also be made to applied examples of these methods such as rapid QES and mega-ethnography.

Date: 30th June 2022

Time: 10.00am – 4.00pm

Places: 30 available for individuals who are resident on the island of Ireland

Skill level: Intermediate

Target Audience: Healthcare professionals, academics, researchers, decision-makers and Evidence Synthesis Ireland fellows who have identified a review topic and are ready to begin working on their protocol.

Prerequisites: Delegates should be familiar with the overall process of systematic review, preferably as it relates to qualitative evidence synthesis.

Teaching strategies: The workshop will consist of a mixture of short presentations, small group and individual exercises. A variety of worksheets and handouts will be provided to encourage practical engagement with learning from the course and further reference to additional resources.

Facilitators: Dr Andrew Booth, Reader at the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR), University of Sheffield

Dr Andrew Booth is a Reader in the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR) at the University of Sheffield. He is a co-convenor of the Cochrane Qualitative and Implementation Methods Group. Andrew is a Chartered Information Professional (UK CILIP) and was awarded the prestigious Cyril Barnard Award for outstanding contribution to health librarianship in 2011. Andrew has been teaching and conducting systematic reviews for over 25 years, latterly specialising in qualitative evidence synthesis (QES) and realist synthesis. He has experience of multiple QES methods including hands-on familiarity with thematic synthesis, framework synthesis and meta-ethnography. Between 2015 and 2021 he has been the world’s most prolific author/co-author of QES methodology and published examples of qualitative evidence synthesis. In 2020 he collaborated with Evidence Synthesis Ireland to support the first ever Cochrane Rapid Qualitative Evidence Synthesis. Andrew’s research focuses on methods of information retrieval and/or qualitative synthesis. He is responsible for many acronyms and mnemonics used in everyday reviewing practice (e.g. SPICE, SPIDER, PerSPE©TiFand RETREAT) and contributes to numerous modules and short courses including his own annual ESQUIRE course on Qualitative Evidence Synthesis.

Course timetable:

10:00  Introductions/Introduction to the Course

10:15  Overview of Qualitative Synthesis

11:00  Introducing Thematic Synthesis

11:15  Break

11:30  Thematic Synthesis Practical

12:15  Lunch

13:00  Introducing Framework Synthesis

13:15   Framework Synthesis Practical

14:00  Introducing Meta-Ethnography

14:15   Meta-Ethnography Practical

15:00  Break

15:15   Choosing Your Method of Synthesis

15:45   Concluding Comments/Questions

16:00  Close

This workshop will be held over four mornings and provides authors at the beginning of the systematic review process, with an in-depth understanding of how reviews are structured. It offers an insight into the development of a protocol, introducing participants to methodology, search methods, data extraction and meta-analysis. This workshop also includes an introduction to RevMan software and its use during protocol development.

Date: 29th & 30th September, 6th & 7th November 2022

Time: 10.00 am – 1.00 pm

Places: 30 available for individuals who are resident on the island of Ireland

Skill level: Introductory

Target Audience: Healthcare professionals, academics, researchers, decision-makers and Evidence Synthesis Ireland fellows who have identified a review topic and are ready to begin working on their protocol.

Prerequisites: Have a basic knowledge of health research. Are interested in learning more on the methodology of a review. Participants are requested to install the RevMan software and bring their laptop to the workshop.

Teaching strategies

The workshop will consist of a mixture of short presentations, led by members of the Cochrane Ireland teaching faculty covering each of the stages of developing a systematic review protocol, small group activities and plenary discussions, providing participants with the opportunity to develop and refine their protocol.

Facilitators

Prof Anne Matthews, School of Nursing, Psychotherapy and Community Health, Dublin City University.

Prof Veronica Lambert, School of Nursing, Psychotherapy and Community Health, Dublin City University.

This workshop will be held over four mornings and provides authors at the beginning of the systematic review process, with an in-depth understanding of how reviews are structured. It offers an insight into the development of a protocol, introducing participants to methodology, search methods, data extraction and meta-analysis. This workshop also includes an introduction to RevMan software and its use during protocol development.

Date: 29th & 30th September, 6th & 7th November 2022

Time: 10.00 am – 1.00 pm

Places: 30 available for individuals who are resident on the island of Ireland

Skill level: Introductory

Target Audience: Healthcare professionals, academics, researchers, decision-makers and Evidence Synthesis Ireland fellows who have identified a review topic and are ready to begin working on their protocol.

Prerequisites: Have a basic knowledge of health research. Are interested in learning more on the methodology of a review. Participants are requested to install the RevMan software and bring their laptop to the workshop.

Teaching strategies

The workshop will consist of a mixture of short presentations, led by members of the Cochrane Ireland teaching faculty covering each of the stages of developing a systematic review protocol, small group activities and plenary discussions, providing participants with the opportunity to develop and refine their protocol.

Facilitators

Prof Anne Matthews, School of Nursing, Psychotherapy and Community Health, Dublin City University.

Prof Veronica Lambert, School of Nursing, Psychotherapy and Community Health, Dublin City University.