Teaching Emergency Medicine Residents Evidence-Based Critical Appraisal Skills: A Controlled Trial

Comparison of Traditional Versus Evidence-Based Journal Club Formats

“…Having only one assessor also limited the sample size to the number of students who completed the elective cardiology clinical rotation during the defined time period. This could have affected our ability to detect a clinically significant difference in the outcomes evaluated, though our results for overall performance are similar to those reported by Bazarian et al 6 A notable difference between the two cohorts was that the traditional based cohort presented their journals individually while the students in the evidence based cohort presented their journal analysis as a group. The team presentation format could have affected the students' grades in addition to the possibility of an uneven level of effort and performance between the members of the group.…”

“…6,[10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] Though there are some variations in the descriptions of these formats, most are centered around a clinical question, finding evidence, systematically evaluating the evidence, and applying the results to clinical practice.…”

“…6 Of the 32 residents enrolled, half were assigned to the traditional approach (control) and the other half, from a different site, to an evidence based approach. Before and after the study period, participants were given a factitious article to evaluate in an essay format to assess critical appraisal skills.…”

“…5 However, this method of critical appraisal is often taught in a nonsystematic way. 6 It is the most common format of journal club used in residency programs and has also been termed "Journal Clubs for Transmission of Information" because it transmits superficial knowledge of new developments in a particular topic or area. 3 Presenters are either assigned an article to present or choose something current in the literature.…”

Misconceptions about practicing evidence-based orthopedic surgery

“…Evidence-based medicine has been implemented in some surgical residency programs and has been found to be beneficial in many cases (Bazarian et al 1999, Edwards et al 2002, Bhandari et al 2003b, Grant 2005, Nicholson and Shieh 2005 (Hurwitz et al 2000). With the increase in healthcare costs due to new techniques and an aging population, it may be necessary to move towards using interventions that are based on high-quality clinical research with patient-important outcomes and demonstrated cost-effectiveness .…”