Cochrane

Protocol: To assess the effects of unbranded advertising of prescription medicines, conducted by or on behalf of pharmaceutical companies, on consumers’ attitudes, knowledge, behaviour, health services use, health outcomes and costs.

Review question We reviewed the effects of decision aids on people facing health treatment or screening decisions. In this update, we added 18 new studies for a total of 105. Background Making a decision about the best treatment or screening option can be hard. People can use decision aids when there is more than one option and neither is clearly ...

Protocol: To assess the effects of 'Summary of findings' tables on communicating key findings of systematic reviews of the effects of healthcare interventions. This will be achieved by: assessing the effects of 'Summary of findings' tables versus full versions of systematic reviews on communicating key findings of systematic reviews of the ...

Review question We reviewed the evidence about the effect of different interventions for raising breast cancer awareness in women. We found two randomised controlled trials, the highest quality of research evidence. Background Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women. Early detection, diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer are ...

The aim of this Cochrane review was to explore how parents experience communication about vaccination for children under six years of age. We searched for and analysed qualitative studies that could answer this question. Qualitative research explores how people perceive and experience the world around them. This review of qualitative research supplements ...

Background People with epilepsy can find it difficult to take their medicines as prescribed, and this is thought to be a reason for poor control of seizures. This review of trials reports on ways of improving how they take their antiepileptic medication. Study characteristics We searched scientific databases for clinical trials looking at ways of ...

Protocol: To evaluate the effectiveness of telephone interventions, delivered by healthcare professionals, when compared to usual care or non-telephone-based support interventions for educating and psychosocially supporting informal carers of people with acute and chronic diagnosed illnesses, on these carers' quality of life, psychosocial and ...

Protocol: The primary objective of this systematic review is to evaluate the effectiveness of offline computer-based eLearning educational interventions compared to traditional classroom learning and/or other types of eLearning or no intervention, for improving medical doctors’ knowledge, skills, attitudes, satisfaction and patient-related ...

Background Automated telephone communication systems (ATCS) send voice messages and collect health information from people using their telephone's touch-tone keypad or voice recognition software. This could replace or supplement telephone contact between health professionals and patients. There are several types of ATCS: one-way voice messages to ...

Protocol: To assess the effects of information or education interventions for improving outcomes in adult intensive care unit (ICU) patients and their carers.