Background:

Cochrane Reviews provide high quality summaries of evidence with the healthcare professional in mind, but time constraints often mean that professionals only read summaries or abstracts.

Objectives:

The aim is to test understanding of the key messages in a review when participants are randomly assigned to receive a summary of a review in one of four mediums (conditions).

Methods:

Participants were recruited online via mailing lists of health professionals and university staff. A recent Cochrane Review of Parent Infant Psychotherapy (Barlow 2015) was chosen. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions; reading the review abstract, the plain language summary, a blog post aimed at health professionals or listening to a podcast interview with the review author. Participants were then asked about the key findings of the review and how, if at all, it would impact on their practice.

Results:

This study is ongoing and results will be presented in terms of the proportion of respondents in each condition who correctly identified the core messages of the review.