ArticleNursing ethics2020
Systematic reviews of empirical literature on bioethical topics: Results from a meta-review.
Article in Nursing ethics, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 15 citations in OpenAlex.
- Ethical aspects of limiting end-of-Life treatment of adult patients at the primary healthcare level in family and emergency medicine: a systematic review.BMC palliative care · 2025Pooled it
- Non-empirical methods for ethics research on digital technologies in medicine, health care and public health: a systematic journal review.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2024Pooled it
- Ethical issues in genomics research in persons with Alzheimer's Disease/Alzheimer's Disease-related dementia (AD/ADRD): a systematic review.BMC medical ethics · 2024Pooled it
- Ethical Principles, Constraints and Opportunities in Clinical Proteomics.Molecular & cellular proteomics : MCP · 2021Pooled it
- Ethics domains in full health technology assessment reports: an attempt to begin mapping the field.International journal of technology assessment in health care · 2025Article
- What can the citations of systematic reviews of ethical literature tell us about their use?-an explorative empirical analysis of 31 reviews.Systematic reviews · 2023Article
- Ethics information retrieval in HTA: state of current practice.International journal of technology assessment in health care · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundIn bioethics, especially nursing ethics, systematic reviews are increasingly popular. The overall aim of a systematic review is to provide an overview of the published discussions on a specific topic. While a meta-review on systematic reviews on normative bioethical literature has already been performed, there is no equivalent for systematic reviews of empirical literature on ethical topics.
objectiveThis meta-review aims to present the general trends and characteristics of systematic reviews of empirical bioethical literature and to evaluate their reporting quality. RESEARCH
designLiterature search was performed on PubMed and Google Scholar. Qualitative content analysis and quantitative approaches were used to evaluate the systematic reviews. Characteristics of systematic reviews were extracted and quantitatively analyzed. The reporting quality was measured using an adapted PRISMA checklist.
findingsSeventy-six reviews were selected for analysis. Most reviews came from the field of nursing (next to bioethics and medicine). Selected systematic reviews investigated issues related to clinical ethics (50%), followed by research ethics (36%) and public health ethics or organizational ethics (14%). In all, 72% of the systematic reviews included authors' ethical reflections on the findings and 59% provided ethical recommendations. Despite the heterogeneous reporting of the reviews, reviews using PRISMA tended to score better regarding reporting quality. DISCUSSION: The heterogeneity currently observed is due both to the interdisciplinary nature of nursing ethics and bioethics, and to the emerging nature of systematic review methods in these fields. These results confirm the findings of our previous review of systematic reviews on normative literature, thereby highlighting a recurring methodological gap in systematic reviews of bioethical literature. This also indicates the need to develop more robust methodological standards.
conclusionThrough its extensive overview of the characteristics of systematic reviews of empirical literature on ethical topics, this meta-review is expected to inform further discussions on minimal standards and reporting guidelines.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.