Article
Sailing the seas in search for patients: international cooperation in the development of a search filter to find articles that address patient issues
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Authors
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L. Hielkema
- Dutch College of General Practitioners, Utrecht, The Netherlands
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J. Brown
- SIGN/Health Improvement Scotland, Glasgow, United Kingdom
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M. Wessels
- Dutch Association of Medical Specialists, Utrecht, The Netherlands
| Published: | July 10, 2012 |
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Outline
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Background: The patient perspective in guideline development is of vital importance. Preferably, patients participate in the guideline development group - as representatives of patient groups or as individuals. Focus group discussions can highlight specific problems and needs, and specific research questions can be addressed by means of literature research.
Objective: To facilitate this literature research a search filter that addresses the patient perspective was developed.
Methods: An existing filter was used as a starting point to develop a new filter that was more adapted to the needs of guideline developers. First we defined the scope of our filter. Then, we developed a reference database as gold standard and compared the performance of the old and the new filter with different disease categories.The filter was developed and validated for Medline (OVID), Pubmed, and Embase.
Results: Sensitivity, specificity, and precision of the new filters were (%) 90.5/98/77 (Medline-OVID), 90.1/98.8/79,3 (Pubmed), 94.7/98.9/81 (Embase).
Discussion: As of November 2011, the filter was incorporated in search strategies. It can be argued that the use of the search filter for patient issues will affect the prioritizing of outcomes and the incorporation of the patient perspective in recommendations.
Implications: Preliminary results will be presented about the way the filter changes recommendations, when applied in the final stages of developing two guidelines on ovarian and squamous cell carcinoma.
