Nursing

• A Systematic Review is a literature review focused on a single question which tries to identify, appraise, select and synthesize all high quality research evidence relevant to that question. Systematic reviews use explicit methods to identify, select, and critically evaluate relevant research.
• Systematic reviews minimize the possibility of bias by using explicit criteria, and expand the relevance of individual studies with limited scope, but only a small number of clinical topics are covered by systematic reviews, because they require years of effort to develop.
• Meta-analyses are systematic reviews that combine the results of several studies using quantitative statistics.

• Narrative reviews are most useful for obtaining a broad perspective on a topic and are often more comparable to a textbook chapter including sections on the physiology and/or epidemiology of a topic. Narrative reviews may not include the author's bias.  The labels Narrative Review and Literature Review often describe the same type of review. The term Literature Review is the one used most often (Rutgers University Libraries).

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