Rapid reviews are often driven by requests for timely evidence for decision-making purposes. This blog is a brief introduction to the topic.
This new webpage from Cochrane UK is aimed at students of all ages. What is evidence-based practice? What is ‘best available research evidence’? Which resources will help you understand evidence and evidence-based practice, and search for evidence?
The Cochrane Climate-Health Working Group welcome new members, from any part of the world. No particular background or expertise with climate change is needed, just an interest in learning more.
The Cochrane Early Career Professionals group are looking for members to join the Steering Group. Applications close on Tuesday 20th July.
This page provides a brief introduction to Cochrane and highlights some of the Cochrane platforms you can participate in, connect with, and learn from. Participate in Cochrane’s mission to produce and promote trusted health evidence.
In this blog, Tessa provides her own summary of a 2019 Cochrane Systematic Review, “Lifestyle changes for treating psoriasis”.
Would you like to try something a bit different? Cochrane are inviting the S4BE community to make short videos for their TikTok and Instagram platforms. Read on to find out more!
Following the addition of new features and updates on the Cochrane Library, Hasan provides an illustrative summary of which features he has found most useful.
This article explores circadian rhythm, the prevalence of its disruption in modern society, and its affects on cancer.
The blog explains what we mean by – and how to calculate – ‘sensitivity’, ‘specificity’, ‘positive predictive value’ and ‘negative predictive value’ in the context of diagnosing disease.
Emily spent some time with the Cochrane Common Mental Disorders group and as part of her learning, she used the Cochrane Interactive Learning modules. In this blog she provides a summary of what she learnt from these modules.
This blog looks at the efficacy and acceptability of benzodiazepines vs placebo in treating panic disorder. It provides a summary of a 2019 Cochrane review, looking at the clinical impact of current evidence.
Is Family Therapy effective in the treatment of Anorexia Nervosa? Emily summarises a recent Cochrane Review in this blog and examines the evidence.
Sarah Tanveer provides tips and guidance for students attending their first Cochrane Colloquium, based on her experience at the Edinburgh Colloquium in 2018.
This blog examines what heterogeneity is, why it matters, how you can identify and measure it and how you can then deal with it.
The Cochrane UK Student Elective is a bi-annual opportunity for students to learn and participate in the activities of Cochrane through their Oxford based UK office. I was lucky to be offered a place in the October 2018 cohort. I can recommend this programme to early researchers looking to add to their research experience. Oxford is also a great UK city to visit and spend some time.
This blog discusses the impact of humanitarian crises on mental health and provides a summary of a 2018 Cochrane Review which assessed the impact of psychological therapies on the mental health of people affected by these crises.
TaskExchange has launched new features especially for evidence newcomers! TaskExchange is Cochrane’s online platform that connects people needing help on health evidence projects (Cochrane and non-Cochrane) with people who have the time and skills to help out.
In this blog, Kamal Pandit discusses the findings of three recent Cochrane reviews which assessed the effectiveness of treatments for Coronary heart disease (CHD). He adds personal experience to provide context to treatment of a condition which is the single leading cause of death globally (WHO 2014).
Cindy and Itzel provide us with a student perspective of their time at the Global Evidence Summit. It was the first meeting of Cochrane, the Campbell Collaboration, the Guidelines International Network (G-I-N), the International Society for Evidence-based Health Care and the Joanna Briggs Institute, which took place in September 2017. “…for our luck, it was our very first time attending a Colloquium. This event took place in the beautiful city of Cape Town, South Africa, the land of the first heart transplant”.
The Global Evidence Summit took place between 13th and 17th September 2017 in Cape Town, South Africa. The event saw over 1400 delegates from 77 countries gather to discuss how to use evidence to improve lives. Heidi Gardner (a PhD student in Applied Health Sciences) blogs on her thoughts, experience, tips and hope for the future after attending the Summit.
This blog is an informal review of the resource ‘Teach Yourself Cochrane’.
This blog is the joint winner of our 2017 student competition to win free registration to the Cochrane UK & Ireland symposium 2017.
This blog is the runner-up of our 2017 student competition to win free registration to the Cochrane UK & Ireland symposium 2017.
This blog is the joint winner of our 2017 student competition to win free registration to the Cochrane UK & Ireland symposium 2017.
Cochrane Crowd, Cochrane’s new citizen science platform, recently ran a successful 48 hour citation screening challenge to reach the goal of 1 million research citations screened. The Cochrane Crowd team have provided this overview of the event.
In the fifth blog of our new series, Understanding Evidence, Lynda Ware gives us a flavour of how she’s taking Cochrane and evidence-based medicine to Community Halls. Join in the conversation on Twitter @CochraneUK #understandingevidence.
In the fourth blog of our new series, Understanding Evidence, the Cochrane UK Trainees introduce their group and invite you to get involved. Join in the conversation on Twitter @CochraneUK #CochraneTrainees #understandingevidence.
In the second blog of our new series Understanding Evidence, Iain Chalmers, the founding director of Cochrane UK, looks at developments in research on prenatal corticosteroids since the work which gave rise to the Cochrane logo. Join in the conversation on Twitter @iainchalmersTTi @CochraneUK #understandingevidence
John, a medical student at Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry, spent 5 weeks at Cochrane UK for part of his elective over July and August 2016. He highly recommends it. Here’s why…
In this blog, 15 year old Liv, who hopes to be a dental health professional, writes about new Cochrane evidence on whether fluoride mouthrinses can prevent tooth decay in children.
Keep up to date with the latest Cochrane evidence by following our sister blog, Evidently Cochrane. Evidently Cochrane posts weekly blogs, which usually feature new or updated Cochrane reviews on a health topic. It is for everyone interested in finding and using the best quality evidence to inform decisions about health.
A nuts and bolts tutorial on how to read a forest plot, featuring a couple of exercises so that you can test your own understanding.
Introducing Cochrane Crowd, a collaborative volunteer effort to help categorise and summarise healthcare evidence so that – ultimately – we can make better healthcare decisions. Find out how and why you should get involved.
Managing hypertension is complex, involves lifestyle modifications such as physical activity and dietary interventions, as well as drugs. Here, we highlight the evidence from Cochrane about which drug is better as a first-line therapy.
There is lack of evidence on acute bronchiectasis regarding the use of airway clearance techniques. What is the impact of evidence gap? And what does current evidence say about the use of ACTs for stable bronchiectasis? Read more to to find out.
This article highlights the importance of the results of Cochrane’s new systematic review on the efficacy of Methylphenidate for ADHD in children and adolescents.
Migraines are a burden to those who suffer from them; they can reduce one’s quality of life, decrease one’s ability to function, and even impair one’s performance. The goal of this Cochrane Review was to see if SSRIs and SNRIs were effective in the prevention of migraines.
Currently decisions made on treatment of bronchiectasis are based on guidelines which have a very poor evidence base. Read more to find out!
Angel takes a look at the new guide on allergies from Sense About Science.
Katherine Stagg explores the impact of language bias and how the language of publications can affect our evidence base.
David’s prize winning Prezi looking at the latest Cochrane evidence for stroke treatment.
Check out Emily’s prize winning Prezi looking at the latest Cochrane evidence on thrombolysis for acute ischaemic stroke.
Angel Wong introduces the Cochrane Textbook of Neurology, an on-line library for Cochrane systematic reviews on neurology and neurosurgery.
Robert Kemp reports on how a Cochrane review group has, with some success, been working to speed up an important stage of the review production process by introducing crowdsourcing methods to the arduous task of citation screening.
Thankfully, this “less is more” idea seems to be a movement gaining serious momentum in the medical world to “wind back the harms of too much medicine”.
In his new book, Dr. Goldacre continues his crusade of exposing quacks and pseudoscience, with an emphasis on how journalists totally mislead the public about what a scientific paper really says. He also chronicles his AllTrials quest by railing against the lack of transparency in clinical trials and publication bias.
Next time you visit your doctor you may find that they’re relying on Wikipedia. I went to India to find out why this isn’t as scary as you might think, and how much everyone’s favourite free encyclopaedia is revolutionising the world of medicine.
The Systematic Review is the highest level of research design and brings available evidence to find an answer to a research question. Read Danny’s blog.
An exciting week of blogs, resources and tutorials, culminating in a LIVE Wiki Editathon, online and at the UK Cochrane Centre on the 16th September!
Alice went to the Cochrane UK and Ireland Annual Symposium in Manchester in April – here are her reflections on its theme: Cochrane Evidence: Useful, Usable, and Used.
Is this your first contact with evidence-based healthcare? This course is a perfect start…
Danny takes us on a tour of the Evidence-Based Medicine Pyramid and the wonders within.
Kyungmin’s second prize entry to the Cochrane UK & Ireland Annual Symposium 2014 – Student Competition. A Prezi looking at the latest Cochrane evidence on prostate cancer screening.
Jamie’s third prize winning entry to the Cochrane UK & Ireland Annual Symposium 2014 – Student Competition. A Prezi looking at the latest Cochrane evidence.
Hala’s third prize winning entry to the Cochrane UK & Ireland Annual Symposium 2014 – Student Competition. A Prezi looking at the latest Cochrane evidence.
Anwen’s first prize entry to the Cochrane UK & Ireland Annual Symposium 2014 – Student Competition. A Prezi explaining the latest Cochrane evidence on routine scale & polish for adults.
Danny has reviewed the US Cochrane Center’s online course that aims to help you understand the basics of evidence-based healthcare and why it’s important.
Systematic reviews take a long time to produce, and are often not up to date. In PLOS Medicine last month, a ‘living systematic review’ was proposed, to reduce the gap between evidence and practice.
Want to learn more about the past, present and future of EBM? The BMJ and JAMA have brought together a collection of EBM pioneers for this panel discussion.
The final two plenary sessions of October 2013’s Cochrane Colloqium looked at knowledge and health globally, and then to the future.
Click here to read more about Graeme’s experiences as a newcomer to Cochrane, at this year’s Colloquium in Quebec.
The second set of plenary talks included topics relevant to students, such as evidence-based medical education.
Videos of the plenary talks from the recent Cochrane colloquium are available online. Alice has had a look at some of the key points raised in the first session.
Alice takes a look at the evidence behind flight socks and other aspects of travel health.
Evidence Aid provides brief summaries of evidence to assist decision makers in disasters and other humanitarian emergencies.
Systematic reviews aren’t cheap or quick – Alice looks at some suggestions from the blogs of Jon Brassey from TRIP and Mona Nasser from Cochrane.
Abu discusses the evidence behind hypnosis.
Whether you couldn’t get enough of the rolling coverage of the royal birth, or couldn’t wait for it to be over, I have here for you a roundup of some of the recent systematic reviews and evidence related to pregnancy and childbirth (royal or otherwise).
David writes about the UK Government’s recent plans to introduce health checks.
“Preventive interventions for postnatal psychosis” is a systematic review published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews in 2013. It aimed to investigate the best available evidence on interventions for preventing Postnatal Psychosis derived from all relevant randomized controlled trials.
Alice has revisited the cord clamping review, she blogged about a couple of months ago…
Forum For Medical Students [INFORMER] is a medical student’s organization aimed at promoting research and evidence-based medicine among undergraduate medical students.
Can probiotics prevent diarrhoea? A new Cochrane review says they can. This blog also walks through a few of the features of Cochrane reviews.
This slideshow from the journal EBM may help introduce you to the role of Cochrane reviews in EBM.
Dr Cates provides easy to read re-freshers on statistics and EBM topics
We can never be let down by the high caliber work of the Cochrane Library but its not just reviews that this site can offer…
Actress Angelina Jolie’s decision to undergo Bilateral Prophylactic Mastectomy has created a media buzz over the past few days. But is there evidence that supports this decision?
This free course was designed for doctors and is successful in explaining the basics of evidence-based practice.
This free course, is designed to help users understand the history of drug regulation and the fundamentals of how drugs are approved in the US. We recommend that you register for this Spotlight Session after completing the course, ‘Understanding Evidence-based Healthcare: A Foundation for Action’.
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