NE/SE Clinical Campus (Grand Forks/Fargo)

Homepage for the Fargo Clinical Campus Librarian

IM / TY Journal Club

Journal Club presentations and practices of Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) are activities through which the residency program supports achievement of competency in practice-based learning.

Steps to preparing for your Journal Club presentation

  1. Discuss the clinical problem. Provide a brief description of your patient (age, gender, key clinical findings, and your assessment of the problem). Did you consult any background sources (textbooks, etc.) on the patient's condition? Did your background reading help you focus on a more specific question?
  2. Define your clinical question. Use the PICO tool to develop a well-built clinical question.
    P  -  Patient, population, or problem
    I  -  Intervention, prognostic factor, or exposure
    C - Comparison (if necessary)
    O  -  Outcome of primary interest
    Access a PICO worksheet for additional informaton.
  3. Find evidence to answer your question. Document a summary of your literature search. What database did you search? What search terms did you use? What were the results of the search?
  4. Select the best journal article (i.e. most relevant and high level of evidence) from the results you have located.
  5. Critically appraise the article. Critical appraisal is the systematic evaluation of a clinical research paper. Start with basic questions such as: Does this study address a clearly focused question? Did the study use valid methods to address this question? Are these valid, important results applicable to my patient or population?
    If the answer to these questions is "yes," continue with additional appraisal of the methodology. Use one of the following article-type worksheets from the Oxford Centre for Evidence Based Medicine as a guide or refer to The User's Guide to the Medical Literature (linked to the left).
    Randomized clinical trial
    Diagnostics study
    Systematic reviews
  6.  Do your findings provide direction for your clinical question?

Resources

Center for Evidence-Based Medicine - University of Oxford

Evidence-Based Medicine Worksheets - Dartmouth Biomedical Libraries

KT Clearinghouse - Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR)

CATWalk - University of Alberta