Background: The goal of systematic reviews is to provide an up-to-date synthesis of the evidence that can be used in practice to improve the health of people. Individuals who have a stake in the evidence include researchers, providers/clinicians and consumers/clients. Changing practice involves consumers/clients, therefore providing information in a way that is useful to these stakeholders is paramount.
Objectives: Describe the engagement of consumers/stakeholders in a review process and the resulting changes in key messages.
Methods: This is a case study using a review of the effectiveness of workplace prevention of upper extremity musculoskeletal disorders employing a Cochrane approach. In this review, we adapted a stakeholder engagement process (Keown 2008). The engagement process was iterative and engaged consumers/stakeholders in the co-development of key messages from the review.
Results: An iterative approach was used to engage multiple consumers/stakeholders at multiple time-points through the review process. In particular, consumers/stakeholders were heavily engaged in the generation of relevant and practical messages that they could implement in their day-to-day practice. They were also instrumental in determining and accepting the threshold for sufficient evidence and accompanying messages.
Conclusions: An iterative approach resulted in practical messages and recommendations. Through this iterative process messages became more practical and 'useful' to consumers/stakeholders. While engaging with multiple consumers/stakeholders is time-consuming we experienced greater uptake of the review results and key messages with this process.