Journal Club Resources

Last week I announced the 1st forensic journal club on Twitter. One thing I meant to mention is that you don’t have to be a clinician to join us–in fact sometimes it can be useful to have a nonclinical set of eyes on the research, giving a very different perspective on its strengths and weaknesses. So for our (many) non-clinical readers, please consider participating February 12th (3pm ET). Today I wanted to provide a couple resources for participating in journal club. The 1st is a tool that may be helpful in thinking about this month’s article.

It comes from UC Davis Emergency Medicine’s journal club and it’s a worksheet (WORD) to help us work through the strengths and weaknesses, and ultimately the takeaway points of the article on which we’re focusing. This, in conjunction with the FHO clinical guide on evaluating research should provide excellent guidance.

The 2nd is an article about the utility of journal clubs specific to nursing practice. Because journal clubs have traditionally been the purview of the physicians, nurses are less versed in how journal clubs can be useful. There’s pretty limited research on how journal clubs impact nursing practice, but here’s a recent one (PDF) that looks at the issue.

I would love to see people get excited about a journal club. We throw around the term evidence-based practice; one way to be able to expose yourself and understand the evidence base is to participate. I hope you’ll join us.