Narrative Reviews: Flexible, Rigorous, and Practical

Narrative reviews are a type of knowledge synthesis grounded in a distinct research tradition. They are often framed as non-systematic, which implies that there is a hierarchy of evidence placing narrative reviews below other review forms.1 However, narrative reviews are highly useful to medical educators and researchers. While a systematic review often focuses on a narrow question in a specific context, with a prespecified method to synthesize findings from similar studies, a narrative review can include a wide variety of studies and provide an overall summary, with interpretation and critique.1 Examples of narrative review types include state-of-the-art, critical, and integrative reviews, among many…