The Cochrane Collaboration Twenty Years On

In the early 1990s, health care costs were spiraling, and new challenges, such as HIV and AIDs, as well as the old faithfuls of infection control, patient safety, and health care quality, were consuming our thoughts. Meanwhile, in Oxford, England, Iain Chalmers, David Sackett, and Muir Gray were starting to think about setting up the Cochrane Collaboration. Privileged to be in Oxford at the time, I went to see Iain Chalmers about my literature review on post‐operative pain management in surgical patients (Kitson, 1994). In the relatively brief encounter, I realized that there was a vast difference between my general sweeping and pulling together of the literature on post‐operative pain management and his developing views about what now are universally accepted as systematic reviews (Chalmers & Altman, 1985). Needless to say, I embarked upon a significant journey to understand the methodology informing reviews of the literature and systematic reviews in general. This conversation led to an invitation to several nursing colleagues to work with Dave, Iain, and Muir in developing the first masters degree in Evidence‐Based Health Care at the University of Oxford, UK (Dawes et al., 1999).