Question

Review these online tutorials, Cochrane for consumers: a pathway which provide an overview of consumer resources available in the Cochrane Library. Then, answer the questions listed below.

How do resources such as Cochrane empower clients/consumers to advocate for their best interest?

How do these resources support collaboration between clients/consumers and healthcare providers?

How can you use resources such as this to improve your client care?

Answer 1

1. How do resources such as Cochrane empower clients/consumers to advocate for their best interests?

Cochrane provides a role for consumers as consumers Referee. The consumer referee improves the quality of Cochrane Reviews by:

• Providing a consumer perspective by commenting on the "Plain Language Summary" of the review
• Commenting on a Cochrane review of the best evidence on a healthcare intervention, prior to publication
• Commenting on protocols (the road map as to how the review is to be done) to ensure that outcomes relevant to consumers are included
• Preparing review summaries in plain language.

Through the role of consumer referee, Cochrane empowers the consumers to advocate for their best interests.

2. How do these resources support collaboration between clients/consumers and healthcare providers?

Cochrane Consumers and Communication is a part of Cochrane that coordinates the preparation and publication of systematic reviews of interventions that affect the way people interact with healthcare professionals, services and researchers.

The reviews fall into six categories:

• Interventions directed to the consumer
• Interventions from the consumer
• Interventions for communication exchange between providers and consumers
• Interventions for communication between consumers
• Interventions for communication to the healthcare provider from another source
• Service delivery interventions

Thus Cochrane Consumers and Communication support collaboration between clients/consumers and healthcare providers through systematic reviews on the interaction of clients with healthcare professionals.

3. How can you use resources such as this to improve your client care?

Cochrane summarizes the findings, so people making important decisions such as clients, doctors, the people who write medical guidelines can use unbiased information to make difficult choices without having to first read every study. Cochrane provides the best evidence to enhance healthcare care knowledge and decision making. They provide evidence-informed health decision-making by producing high-quality, relevant, accessible systematic reviews and other synthesized research evidence. Cochrane publishes a wealth of material to support and guide the health decision making. The various resources available are: Cochrane Evidence Essentials - a free online resource offering an introduction to health evidence and how to use it to make informed health choices

Featured reviews - find out more about the latest featured Cochrane evidence with links to the Plain Language Summaries and full reviews

Podcasts - Listen to the latest Cochrane evidence in an easy to access audio format, allowing you to stay up to date on newly published reviews.

For example, we want to know whether incentives help for smoking cessation? Then we can search in Cochrane Library which gives you information on this. It provides information on this as overall there is high‐certainty evidence that incentives improve smoking cessation rates at long‐term follow‐up in mixed population studies. Thus, the Cochrane database provides information on best practices available for client care and to use them in patient care.