Table 1.

Design and characteristics of the sample and population of the included studies.

Study		Population	Time frame (months)	Sample size	Setting
Diagnostic test accuracy studies
	Gerdes and Hardahl, 2013 [44]	Not stated	26	500	Not stated
	O’Leary et al, 2013 [41]	Adults, exclusion of patients admitted under observation status and cared for by either of the two medical record abstractors	12	250	General internal medicine
Prevalence studies
	Call et al, 2014 [36]	Children	48	390	Oncology Hematology
	Dickermann et al, 2011 [37]	Children, exclusion weekend days for 5 months because of resource limitations	12	13,526	General internal medicine Surgical care Emergency department Intensive care unit (ICU) Psychiatric unit
	Lim et al, 2016 [42]	Adults	3x1 month	Not stated	Not stated
	Moore et al, 2009 [38]	Adults	5	456	General internal medicine Surgical care Obstetrics or gynecology
	Muething et al, 2010 [39]	Children	21 for one trigger and 16 for another one	Not stated	Not stated
	Nwulu et al, 2013 [45]	Not stated	12	54,244	Not stated
	Patregnani et al, 2015 [43]	Children	52 for one trigger; 40 and 60 for the others	Not stated	Pediatric ICU Neonatal ICU Cardiac ICU Medical and surgical acute care areas
	Shea et al, 2013 [40]	Children	36	6,872	Pediatric ICU Cardiac ICU
	Stockwell et al, 2013 [25]	Children, exclusion of emergency departments and ambulatory clinics	36 for hospital 1 and 51 for hospital 2	Not stated	General internal medicine Surgical care Psychiatric unit Neonatal Cardiac ICU Pediatric ICU