Identifying the fundamentals of care within Cochrane Systematic reviews: the role of the Cochrane Nursing Care Field Fundamentals of Care Node.

The role of the Fundamentals of Care (FoC) Node within the Cochrane Nursing Care Field (CNCF) is to identify universal aspects of patient care as they relate to and potentially affect the application of the results of systematic reviews. The CNCF was established to provide a nursing perspective of Cochrane reviews and to promote their dissemination and uptake. The core functions of the CNCF include identifying topics for nursing care not currently addressed by Cochrane Reviews, raising awareness of the Cochrane Collaboration and the resources it has that supports the delivery of nursing care and the dissemination of relevant reviews to the nursing care community. We outline how volunteers with an interest in the FoC can work to identify care-related aspects for specific clinical reviews. This article describes the development of a tool designed to guide the review of a Cochrane Systematic Review from the vantage of the FoC. The FoC Node is seeking volunteers to undertake this review work, and we have outlined the steps used to do this. We also show how using the FoC Template can inform the tagging and classifying of existing reviews within the Cochrane library.