Consequently, determining the best course of treatment to reduce mortality is paramount. A web-based search using keywords was conducted to determine sources of external evidence. The use of keywords, as a search strategy, provides a general picture of the resources relevant to the question. However, multiple synonyms, plurals or misspelled words can cause to miss studies (Melnyk & Fineout-Overholt, 2015). The key words used in this search, which came from the PICOT question, were: sepsis, mortality, albumin, fluid resuscitation, and colloids. The data bases used were: PubMed, Cochrane and Ebsco, which were accessed via Florida International University …show more content…
The main reason that these are the highest level of evidence is because they summarize and pre-appraise available studies (Melnyk & Fineout-Overholt, 2015). Meta-analyses use statistical methods to summarize data, which makes them a consistent source of information. Clinicians spent less time determining the reliability of the evidence. Therefore, the amount of time between finding reliable evidence and delivery of care is considerably reduced with the use of any form of evidence summary (Melnyk & Fineout-Overholt, 2015). The selected evidence to answer this PICOT question was used to complete the following evaluation table. The second table is a synthesis table. Evaluation tables contain information about each individual study. On the contrary, synthesis tables contain aspects that make each study unique such as outcome or interventions (Melnyk & Fineout-Overholt,