public health and infection control

It is important in public health and infection control to be systematic and transparent in relation to how practitioners and researchers search for the literature that they use to inform their research or practice. Narrative reviews, whilst helpful, can be problematic in that it is not always clear what was left out of the literature review process. Literature reviews which take a systematic approach are preferred as the reader can explore how the authors of the literature review carried out their review. This helps the reader make a judgement on how thorough the review was and whether the inclusion and exclusion criteria, for example, were very narrow and thus literature could have been missed out. Literature reviews which are systematic also enable the reader to assess how far the methodological quality of the papers were taken into account when reviewing the literature. After all, not all papers that are published are necessarily the best evidence available and it can be problematic to base practice and interventions on weak evidence.
Assessment Guidance
You are required to structure your literature review as follows using the following sub-headings:

1. Introduction and definition of the objective of review
   • Define literature review and critically link to the nature of evidence in health and social care research.
   • Introduce the chosen topic.
   • Present a clear literature review question using PICO.
2. Inclusion and exclusion criteria for studies to be considered in the literature review
   • This section should include a description of the inclusion and exclusion criteria for the studies (including the PICO elements). The inclusion and exclusion criteria section should also include the research method, methodological quality, sample size, language of publication, and date of research.
   • Students should tailor their inclusion/exclusion criteria to ensure they are left with a manageable number of studies to include in their review.
   • Examples of potential exclusion criteria which could be used to limit the amount of studies included in the literature review: studies from a specific time period/ those in English/ conducted in a specific country/only include those studies at the top of the hierarchy of evidence and so on.
   • Ideally you should not have more than 10 studies in this literature review given the time that is available to you and the amount of words that you have available. Think of this assignment as practising the skills to carry out a literature review that is systematic and transparent