Article type
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Abstract
Background: as a significantly important part of clinical practice, nursing should be advanced in the professionalization process in many ways. Case reports are regarded as lower grade in the hierarchy of evidence, but one of the principles of evidence-based medicine is that decision making should be based on a systematic summary of evidence. However, the application and the popularization of the Case Report (CARE) guidelines, which are the reporting guidelines for case report, is still undefined.
Objectives: to investigate the application situations of CARE guidelines in Nursing Science Citation Index (SCI-index) journals in the nursing field.
Methods: we identified nursing SCI-index journals from the professional website (journal.medsci.cn/journal/index), and searched all the case reports in every website of the selected journals before December 2017. After screening titles and abstracts of the case reports of the identified journals, we selected the journals included the case reports that met the inclusion and exclusion criteria. From the Author Guidelines only, we retrieved the Submission checklist/Author checklist and Reporting guidelines of the selected journals.
Results: ultimately, we selected 14 journals, except for two journals that no longer accept case reports. Only one journal explicitly mentioned CARE guidelines, but did not require a checklist when submitting. Six journals mentioned EQUATOR network for searching for the suitable guidelines. Among these seven journals, three journals clearly required reporting guidelines checklists, and the rest of them didn’t require that in the Submission checklist/Author checklist. (see Table 1).
Conclusions: we found that the application of CARE guidelines in nursing SCI-index journals was limited. More attention should be paid to the standardization of case reports, and pertinence measures should be taken to popularize CARE guidelines. Journals that are suitable for case reports should add CARE guidelines to their Author Guidelines, as well as requiring a reporting guidelines checklist, and authors should follow the appropriate reporting guideline proactively while writing, which would give readers a clear perspective on the specific nursing process.
Patient or healthcare consumer involvement: patients and healthcare consumers were not involved in this work.
Objectives: to investigate the application situations of CARE guidelines in Nursing Science Citation Index (SCI-index) journals in the nursing field.
Methods: we identified nursing SCI-index journals from the professional website (journal.medsci.cn/journal/index), and searched all the case reports in every website of the selected journals before December 2017. After screening titles and abstracts of the case reports of the identified journals, we selected the journals included the case reports that met the inclusion and exclusion criteria. From the Author Guidelines only, we retrieved the Submission checklist/Author checklist and Reporting guidelines of the selected journals.
Results: ultimately, we selected 14 journals, except for two journals that no longer accept case reports. Only one journal explicitly mentioned CARE guidelines, but did not require a checklist when submitting. Six journals mentioned EQUATOR network for searching for the suitable guidelines. Among these seven journals, three journals clearly required reporting guidelines checklists, and the rest of them didn’t require that in the Submission checklist/Author checklist. (see Table 1).
Conclusions: we found that the application of CARE guidelines in nursing SCI-index journals was limited. More attention should be paid to the standardization of case reports, and pertinence measures should be taken to popularize CARE guidelines. Journals that are suitable for case reports should add CARE guidelines to their Author Guidelines, as well as requiring a reporting guidelines checklist, and authors should follow the appropriate reporting guideline proactively while writing, which would give readers a clear perspective on the specific nursing process.
Patient or healthcare consumer involvement: patients and healthcare consumers were not involved in this work.
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