How to run a journal club

  1. Dedicated time- preferably before ward round at 8.15am rather than 4pm on a Friday afternoon
  2. Dedicated person- preferably the registrars.
  3. Dedicated place- options are day room in the ward, endoscopy unit seminar room , post graduation centre or consultants office
  4. The rota of the presenters should be there three months in advance.
  5. Topic should preferably be given at least a week in advance
  6. Coffee and croissant! Courtesy consultants or departmental.
  7. Power point presentation
  8. The topic should be carefully selected – must be clinically relevant, recent (published in the last 6 months), from Journal with impact factor within the top five (i.e. good quality paper).
  9. Prepare for the presentation
  10. Get the full paper in the pdf form and circulate to all the participants
  11. Read the other positive and negative references mentioned in the paper- get the relevant full papers in pdf in the same way.
  12. Show the audience the graphs and chart but mark the areas of interests
  13. There should be a named chair- either a consultant or registrar can take this role.
  14. All attendees will sign the register and will be emailed the presentation before hand
  15. Try to avoid multiple printouts (save the trees!) but keep a maximum of three, in case somebody want to look at some points closely ( hopefully they have done it beforehand but we don’t live in an ideal world!)
  16. Time the presentation- not more than 15minutes- remember optimally one slide is one minute
  17. Prepare the background to the study or the need for the study.
  18. Briefly tell why the study was needed – previous positive and negative studies
  19. Then critique the paper based on a standard algorithm ( See the topic on how to critique a paper)
  20. Finally say the strength and weaknesses of the study and see whether the conclusions can be used in clinical practice. Hardcore evidence takes time to reach consensus and distil in to clinical practice.
  21. Take the questions and engage the audience in brainstorming
  22. Inform the audience of the next week’s topic and presenter.

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