Later on this week, I’ll be doing a Journal Club on Journal Clubs (on Weds 21st at 1500 UK time – register here)! The aim of this Journal Club is to provide a bit of a ‘how-to’ guide on identifying and critically analysing good studies. Clearly, the definition of a “good” study will very much depend on your point of view and your interests. For example, a very well designed and conducted study in one journal may be of far less interest to you than a less well designed and / or conducted study on a more relevant topic. I picked up this BMJ Evidence Based Medicine article on Journal Clubs from 2017, which I’ve suggested as reading material before the Journal Club.

Believe it or not, the BMJ Evidence Based Medicine article identified three systematic reviews of Journal Clubs, finding that (unsurprisingly) they tend to increase knowledge, but there are questions over their value in translating this into improved clinical practice. A big part of this, I suspect, is that these features are difficult to measure objectively.

The short article is BMJ Evidence Based Medicine article is built around 5 reasons for running a journal club, 16 suggestions on how to run a journal club effectively, and 10 tips on how to prepare journal club proceedings for publication. For me, publishing the proceedings of a journal club isn’t an exciting prospect. I’d much rather spend my time on writing other types of article for publication. So, these last 10 tips were a bit lost on me. But, the 5 reasons for running a journal club, and 16 suggestions on how to run them well were helpful!

Phil Norville and I recently starting doing a virtual IPC Journal Club (details on how to subscribe here). We got out heads together to develop our aims for the Journal Club:

• To provide insight into a topical IPC published paper
• To generate discussion
• To provide opportunities for continuous professional development (CPD)
• To exercise critical thinking skills
• To build confidence for independent study
• To foster a network of enthusiasts
• To have a bit of fun! 

These are similar to the 5 reasons in the BMJ Evidence Based Medicine Article, but our aims include reference to creating a network, CPD opportunities…and fun. (You’ll have to come along to judge whether you could describe the Journal Club as ‘fun’…!) As for the 16 suggestions on how to run an effective Journal Club, they are helpful. A couple of comments on some of these:

• The article suggests trying to cover 3x articles in each Journal Club. This seems too much. We have gone for a single article each time, and so far, have had many more questions than we have had time to deal with. Focussing on one paper keeps the time commitment down a but, but does mean that if the topic isn’t so relevant for you, you are unlikely to come.
• There is a suggestion of a 50:50 split between introducing the paper and discussing it. We started off with this, but have moved to 33% introduction and 66% discussion, which seems like a better balance.
• “Encourage communality”. We are keen that Journal Club is a safe and friendly space. Given the virtual format, and number of people who have attended, it’s not possible to allow verbal contributions from the audience. But the Q&A is open, and we are keen to have more guest presenters in future.

Hope that you are finding Journal Club useful so far – and hope to see you on Wednesday.