If you are going to be an excellent physician, you will need to have the ability to read the medical literature critically in order to sift the useful new studies from the poorly-constructed and unreliable ones. Our resident-driven journal club occurs quarterly. Supported by a faculty member, the resident presenting Journal Club for that month seeks to answer/understand a clinical question by reviewing the standard of care, supporting research publications, and critiquing/challenging thought to this question through journal articles.
Each resident is expected to read the article or articles ahead of time, to allow for intelligent discussion. Our journal clubs alternate between delving into a landmark study and using three articles to guide us in evaluating clinical practice guidelines. For the landmark approach, we deconstruct each article, discussion methods by which the study was constructed, potential elements of bias introduced by those methods, and how those affect the credibility of the results and conclusions. We review principles of basic statistics relevant to the case to assist in our evaluation of the data, and we employ evidence-based medicine practices to guide us in how we can incorporate valid new evidence into our practice. The three-article approach to journal club requires the examination of a cross-sectional study, a randomized control trial, and finally, a clinical practice guideline. Through this approach, we learn to evaluate the evidence behind clinical practice guidelines before applying these guidelines to our practice.
