I stumbled on this interesting paper. The objectives are indeed “noble”, but critical appraisal remains the top priority.
There are many papers that get published every single day. Much of it is usually rehashed from the available sources. Therefore, I feel that a statistician should always be part of the process. There should be a focus on meta-analysis and identifying the issues related to “randomised trials”, for example. A cynical person should always be part of the process, especially for papers that promise the moon. (For example, a boatload of mabs that are flooding the market right now!).
(emphasis mine)
Successful journal clubs are predicated upon thorough preparation and the development of clear, specific goals and objectives. Defining and articulating the goals and objectives of any educational experience is an important pedagogical step;4 in fact, developing clear goals and objectives has been suggested to be the first and most important step in the creation of a successful journal club.9–11 Reflection on the defined goals will guide further decisions regarding journal club format, the selection of facilitators, and the types of articles to review. Goals should be reviewed regularly and approved by journal club participants.10 Explicit statement of the goals, creation of learning objectives, and selection of the most appropriate session format were all found to be factors that increase the educational benefit among journal club participants.4,11
Several surveys across multiple medical specialties have assessed the most common goals for a journal club. These include teaching critical appraisal skills, providing an impact on clinical practice, remaining current on medical literature, allowing residents and faculty to work together on a common project, and learning research methodology.4,6,12–14 Among these, teaching critical appraisal skills was considered the most important goal for journal clubs. In their recommendations for journal club implementation, Lee and colleagues have defined a set of objectives for teaching and assessing practice-based learning, which is illustrated in Table 2.15 In his paper describing the role of journal clubs in orthopedic residencies, Greene identified similar goals to those defined by Lee; however, he added the benefits of residents to learn a specialty and the development of camaraderie between residents and faculty.16
RadOncNotes 