Fundamental nursing care: A systematic review of the evidence on the effect of nursing care interventions for nutrition, elimination, mobility and hygiene.

Only 13 of 149 included trials were high quality; most were at risk of bias. Many trials did not specify a primary outcome, so the reviewers treated all outcomes as equally important and could not be sure which result mattered most. Positive findings were often offset by no-difference results in the same trial or other trials. The review searched only nurse-delivered interventions and English-language studies, so useful evidence from other disciplines or languages may have been missed. Interventions and outcomes were too varied to combine into one overall estimate, so the review is a descriptive map rather than a pooled result. Many participant health conditions were unspecified, especially in nutrition and mobility studies, so applicability to particular patients is uncertain.

Do not conclude that nursing interventions for nutrition, elimination, mobility and hygiene are proven. The review found only 13 high-quality trials. Positive findings were mostly from low-quality or bias-prone studies, and high-quality trials showed no clear effect or mixed results.