American College of Physicians Journal Club. 2007 Jul-Aug;147(1):A8-9.
Schwartz MD, Dowell D, Aperi J, Kalet A.
Division of General Internal Medicine, Section of Primary Care, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA.
Significance:
Dr. Schwartz and colleagues have described a model for helping residents and fellows synthesize and make lean, pithy presentations of research articles at Journal Clubs. They developed and road-tested this model with NYU residents over the last decade. They draw on the parallel with brief clinical case presentations and present a ten-step guideline for the process.
Opening excerpt:
[Reproduced with the kind permission of ACP Journal Club. Link below excerpt is to the full text on the ACP Journal Club website.]
Fifteen years ago we sought to develop a method for teaching residents how to make lean, pithy journal club presentations. Our aim was to help them distil an article down to its core while systematically reviewing its validity and telling a compelling story. Others have created successful journal clubs by explicitly linking the educational experience to questions raised in caring for patients (1).
Brief article presentations are structurally similar to the brief case presentations we do all the time. On work rounds, morning report, or sign-out, the goal is to communicate the essential information about a patient in a concise, mostly standardized format that is easily digested by the listener. We reasoned that, just as learners progress from meandering and imprecise case presentations on clinical clerkships to brief, utilitarian sign-outs as senior residents, journal club presenters can learn to efficiently convey the essence of an article.
We introduce this model of journal club presentation to medical residents in a small-group workshop early during internship and then deepen residents’ skills during our Clinical Epidemiology course in the second year (2). Residents’ skills are reinforced and refined throughout residency at a weekly Journal Club attended by 10 to 20 residents, fellows, and faculty.
We use the following 10-step guideline to help presenters increase efficiency in assessing a study’s validity and results and to increase confidence in limiting a presentation to the core essentials. Faculty members model the process and residents learn through reflective practice. … [Full text]
PMID: 17608363
