Welcome to Journal Club!

Journal club is an outstanding opportunity for residents to gain experience in critically reviewing articles and growing in their teaching skills. There are two major goals for Journal Club. The first is to grow and further develop skills in teaching. This will be accomplished through going through the full process of preparing and leading a conference. You will be required to develop objectives (real objectives: see below) and a lesson plan. A faculty mentor will help you along the way along with providing you guidance on how to present an engaging learning session. A major goal is developing the skills to critically review an article in the clinical setting. Too often we seem to get bogged down in esoteric methods discussions in Journal Clubs in medical schools (what the heck is a Chi square??) and lose sight of what we really do: we treat patients and just need to know if the article should change our practice. To do this, we need to truly understand the key concepts of critical reviews. Memorizing formulas or learning some statistical nonsense will not be helpful, but understanding what relative risk and absolute risk, that is where the money is!

Be sure to review the Journal Club Curriculum prior to starting the process. Afraid of bio stats, here is a nice website: Students 4 Best Evidence.

Also, please review the following resources to avoid any bias and utilize antiracist planning when presenting race based information and presenting patient cases.

Click here: Reviewing Didactics for Inclusivity - Brown University Medical School

Timeline

Each first year resident is assigned to lead a 45 minute Journal Club as part of the conference series. Prior to the year, the Conferences Chief in conjunction with the faculty lead will develop an overall schedule along with assigning a faculty mentor (see below). The faculty mentor will guide the resident throughout the process and attend the Journal Club. 

One Month Prior to Conference

•  Contact the faculty lead and discuss the format of the journal club and begin searching for potential articles. 

• Articles to consider:

  • Areas of your interest (if you are not interested then neither will your learners)

  • Articles receiving press. Be sure to look at NPR and the New York Times health sections.

  • Articles mentioned by faculty as important

Two Weeks Prior

• Article is to be selected and 2-4 objectives sent to your faculty mentor.

• Notes on objectives:

  • Recommend reviewing the Curriculum Objectives (under Goal 2 Evidence Based Medicine) and identifying 1-3 areas to concentrate on during the conference. The curriculum objectives will also provide you examples of how to write objectives along.

  • Definition of an objective: “An objective is a specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time-bound condition that must be attained in order to accomplish a particular goal. Objectives define the actions must be taken within a year to reach the strategic goals.”

  • Writing objectives is a key component to a great presentation, but often ignored or rushed at the end. The objectives provide a framework for the presenter, identifying what the focus will be. They identify what behavior the learner will have following the lecture, so they are always started by an action verb. Objectives are not a list of what you will teach/present, but instead what you want your learner to be able to do following the lecture. Remember, most people will not be able to gain more than 1-3 things from any talk. With this in mind, you should never have more than 3-4 objectives (and some would argue only 1-3).

  • One last key component of writing a good objective is making it achievable from your conference. An example of an objective on a potential talk would be “The learner will be able to list the causes of hypercalcemia.”  The action verb that the learner will be able to do is “list”.  This is measurable, and is learner centered.  The issue is that it will take much more than simply posting a single slide with the causes of hypercalcemia to achieve this goal.  Our job, after writing a good objective (which this maybe a good one, depending upon the talk) is to actually achieve it.  This would mean multiple different methods would be needed to have the learner truly list the causes of hypercalcemia. 

  • The following are excerpts from Park University’s Website (http://www.park.edu/cetl2/quicktips/writinglearningobj.html):

    Tips for Improving Learning Objectives:

    • Learning objectives have two parts: an action verb and a content area. Utilize the action verb to specify the desired student performance followed by a specific description of the course-specific content target.

    • Keep statements short and focused on a single outcome. This allows instructors to determine whether or not an objective has been met without having to distinguish between partial completion or success.

    • To ensure that learning objectives are effective and measurable, avoid using verbs that are vague or cannot be objectively assessed. Use active verbs that describe what a student will be able to do once learning has occurred.

    • Learning objectives should be student-focused and target the expected student outcome. To assist in maintaining a student-centered emphasis, start learning objectives with the phrase "The learner/student will be able to. . ."

    • Learning objectives should be SMART (specific, measurable, acceptable to the instructor, realistic to achieve, and time-bound with a deadline).

    • Include complex or higher-order learning objectives when they are appropriate. Most instructors expect students to go beyond memorization of facts and terminology; learning objectives should reflect instructors' expectations for student performance.

  • For more assistance, including words to use, take a look at this: Writing Objectives

Week of Conference

• Finalize Education Plan for Conference

  • The education plan is an outlined plan for the conference, providing the methods for achieving the objectives. The methods need to hit multiple different senses (not just powerpoint: needs to be interactive) and really, the different activities should be traced to a specific objective. If you are unable to trace an activity to an objective, then the activity should be removed (or an objective added). Remember: teach less but learn more. You should also include some type of assessment for the objective (group work with reporting, individual work with reporting, individual quizzes, role playing).

  • Your final plan should be sent and reviewed by your mentor 1 day prior to the conference

Feedback

Residents will receive informal, formative feedback during each step of the process and a written milestone based evaluation at the complete of the presentation by the faculty lead and also from the learners.

Feel free to email Dr. Putnam with questions!

Schedule

2022-2023 academic year - TBD