Background: Systematic reviews are currently the most consulted secondary source of evidence. New systematic reviews about nursing interventions to improve the health of individuals, families, and communities are produced every day. There are several tools for the critical analysis of the articles that are included in a systematic review. There is no evidence about which ones are used by systematic reviews of nursing interventions.
Objectives: The aim of this review of reviews is to identify which are the tools for critical analysis most used in nursing interventions.
Methods: Between December 2022 and January 2023, the search was conducted with the following keywords: systematic review, nurse intervention, and effectiveness. The PubMed, Scopus, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Cochrane, and Web of Science (WOS) databases were consulted. The years 2010-2022 were established as limit, with the following languages: English, Spanish, German, and Portuguese. Inclusion criteria were systematic reviews (quantitative or mixed method) that quantitatively analyzed the effectiveness of nursing interventions. The review was conducted with the support of the A MeaSurement Tool to Assess systematic Reviews (AMSTAR) 2 guideline.
Results: The initial search yielded 576 articles. After eliminating duplicates, reading the abstract, and applying inclusion criteria, 90 articles remained. Of the 90 articles, 47 were eliminated due to insufficient description of the population or methodology or inadequate interpretation of the results. A total of 43 articles are analyzed in this review. A total of 55.8% of the systematic reviews correspond to educational interventions, 25.5% to care interventions, and 18.6% to administrative interventions. The tools used to analyze the quality of the articles included in the systematic reviews were as follows: Cochrane 46.5%, Johanna Briggs Institute 32.5%, consort guidelines 6.9%, Medical Education Research Study Quality Instrument (MERQI) guidelines 9.4%, and Jadad Guide 4.6%.
Conclusions: The most prevalent systematic reviews of nursing interventions are those that include educational and care interventions. The most widely used tool for critical analysis is the Cochrane Collaboration. Patient, public, and/or healthcare consumer involvement: This review of reviews was conducted by nurses from two different universities. It is expected that it will serve as an input for the new generations of nurses on the importance of the synthesis of evidence.