TUMS Journal Clubs
What is Journal Club?
Journal clubs are a well-recognized quality improvement strategy used by health practitioners to critique and keep up-to-date with relevant health literature and have been in place for over 100 years. Participants meet regularly to critique research articles, to improve their understanding of research design, statistics and critical appraisal. Thus the philosophy of journal club from its inception was to share current knowledge, and translate it into evidence-based patient care.
The origins of journal clubs are typically attributed to Sir William Osler in the late1870s. By the 1980s, they were common place, and have been used as a method for educating trainees and keeping physicians appraised of current peer reviewed research.
Journal clubs play an important role in the education of residents and as an academic forum present opportunities for researchers to gather and discuss recent publications from peer-reviewed journals. These meetings help researchers improve their knowledge and keep up-to-date with literature and current findings, exercise their critical appraisal skills and improve their presentation and debate abilities, and the practicality of applying study results to patients.
Why we run Journal Clubs?
- To highlight new findings;
- To teach practitioners to search for interesting articles with best evidence to inform clinical practice;
- To encourage practitioners to read and appraise publications critically;
- To encourage practitioners to do applied clinical research;
- To improve debating skills, leadership skills, and aid peer mentorship.
Top tips for journal club success:
- Discuss journals that link with real clinical problems relevant to your department
- Encourage questions and open discussion
- Aim for critical appraisal of methodology
- Provision of refreshments
- Be clear of time, place, topics and roles
- Finish discussion with clear clinical message learnt from the journal appraisal
What is Online Journal Club?
TUMS is the first to use the Journal Club live online platform within Appraise To Raise Program, which lets participants discuss papers with the presence of their authors in real time.
Historically, journal clubs have thrived as local, in-person meetings organized around a single medical specialty. When Sir William Osler formed his journal club at McGill University in 1875, we doubt that he imagined a day when medical practitioners from across the globe could discuss the latest, practice-changing medical literature simultaneously. However, with advances in social media and technology, journal clubs are poised to take an evolutionary step by harnessing digital connectivity.
TUMS Online Journal Clubs are uniting hundreds of medical practitioners from around the world under the banner of one cause: enhancing knowledge translation of the medical literature without the limitations of geography.
Appraise To Raise team provide a way for trainees and practitioners to connect with their colleagues around the world and develop online communities of practice for the purpose of disseminating the latest medical literature and translating it into clinical practice. We provide the infrastructure and recommendations for establishing and conducting online journal clubs in an effective and sustainable manner.
