Setting up a journal club at UHCW

What is a Journal Club?

Journal clubs provide an opportunity for healthcare professionals to get together regularly and discuss a research article relevant to their area of practice. They are a great way for participants to keep up-to-date with current research in their field.

Why start a Journal Club?

Journal clubs can offer a whole range of benefits for healthcare professionals.

They can help:

• Improve the team’s understanding of current topics relevant to the their practice
• Support the mobilisation of evidence into practice
• Provide opportunities for continuing professional development (CPD)
• Improve participants’ information literacy, particularly their critical appraisal skills
• Improve communication skills and encourage teamwork
• Improve presentation skills
• Support quality improvement projects and development of practice guidelines

Acknowledgements:

This guide was written by Beth Jackson, Knowledge Skills Librarian at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire.

Information in this guide has been adapted from the RCVS Knowledge guide to setting up and running journal clubs, with permission.
https://knowledge.rcvs.org.uk/document-library/setting-up-and-running-a-journal-club-in-practice/

The ‘Top Tips’ page has been adapted from CAHPR's Top Ten Tips series, with permission.
https://cahpr.org.uk/cahpr-top-ten-tips/running-a-journal-club/

Before getting started, we recommend getting your team together to discuss the purpose of the journal club and establish what goals you would like to achieve. Ensuring all participants feel empowered to contribute to each session is important, in order to successfully embed the club into your team.

How you run the club will be influenced by a variety of factors, including your team's availability, experience of reading academic literature and research interests. Some clubs feature relatively informal discussions, whereas others follow a more structured agenda. Some key points to consider include:

• How frequently do you plan to meet?
• How long will each session take?
• Who will be attending?
• Will you meet face-to-face or online?
• How will you keep members informed of sessions / topics?
• How will the article be selected?
• Who will lead the session?
• What tool will you use to appraise the paper?
• How will you measure your goals?
• Would any of the team benefit from further skills training in advance?

Journal Clubs will typically choose a paper and appraisal tool before the session, to allow participants the opportunity to review and reflect on the content in advance.

The questions you use to interrogate the paper will depend on the study design. We’ve included some example discussion points below, from a range of different CASP checklists. Try using these examples as jumping off points for further discussion.

Discussing the study content:

• Did the study address a clearly focused research question?
• Who wrote, contributed to & funded the study?
• When/where was the study conducted and/or published?
• Do you think all relevant studies were included?
• Was the study conducted in such a way that it eliminated bias? (catalogofbias.org)
• Were participants recruited in an acceptable way?
• Did each group receive the same level of care?
• Is the intervention realistic or is the control a fair comparison?
• Was the follow-up of participants long enough?
• Were the effects of the intervention reported comprehensively?
• Do the patient profiles match those in your care? If not, is this a problem?

Implications for practice:

• Do the benefits outweigh the harms and costs?
• What are the implications for practice?
• What could the study have done differently to be applicable to patients in your care?
• What resources would you need to introduce this intervention?
• Do you need to liaise with the library for further evidence searches?

Format: Some groups structure their meetings by using an appraisal checklist, others use the time for an informal discussion on the implications for practice. You may want to try different approaches to see what works best for your team.

Planning: It is often necessary to plan meetings with plenty of notice for busy clinical services. Try to be inclusive by offering a range of opportunities to avoid excluding staff working specific days. Do you need to book a room or ICT equipment?

Focus: Do you want to hold a larger, multi-disciplinary group, or a smaller special interest group? This may likely change the focus of the club, the types of articles you select and the frequency with which you meet.

Leadership: Do you want to have a permanent facilitator of the group, or do you want to rotate the leadership each time? It is important that all participants feel able to contribute, so some find it easier not to appoint a manager to run meetings.

Relevance: Keeping the theme of meetings relevant to recent developments, new procedures etc. relevant to practice encourages colleagues to "buy-in" to attending the club.

Keep track: Recording the themes of your meetings and the articles you discuss can ensure you don't duplicate topic coverage and keep people's interest.

Evaluate: Is your group having an impact on practice? You could use the group to review policies within your speciality and implement changes.

Look beyond: Trying searching literature outside of your usual publications for different perspectives and fresh inspiration. The library can help with sourcing materials and refreshing your skills.

Experience: Having a variety of research experience in the group can be fantastic for peer learning. However, not everyone will be familiar with appraising research literature and the process can be intimidating. The library offers a range of training sessions to support your journal club and can be designed to specifically support your team's needs.

The BMJ - How to Read a Paper
A reputable series of articles on reading an interpreting different kinds of scientific papers, covering common study designs and statistics.

Catalogue of Bias
Collaborative project featuring a database of all the different biases that effect healthcare research.

JAMA Evidence
Collection of resources and publications to support decision-makers to assess the validity, importance, and applicability of healthcare research. The JAMA Network also produce a User's Guide to the Medical Literature, to help readers understand and interpret clinical research.

NICE Glossary and CASP Glossary
Two helpful compilations of definitions related to critical appraisal and evidence-based medicine.

Understanding Health Research
This tool will guide you through a series of questions to help you to review and interpret a published health research paper.

Study Designs - Deakin University Library
A series of useful LibGuides on different types of study designs. Also includes specific guides on:
Quantitative Study Designs and Qualitative Study Designs

Students 4 Best Evidence
Network of students across the world interested in evidence-based healthcare. The website features useful blogs, reviews and resources covering EBM topics, including critical appraisal and study designs.

HRP Statistics Portal
YouTube playlist of statistics and research topics, produced by the World Health Organization (WHO) Human Reproduction Programme. An online portal is also available, but users will need to request access. Visit the WHO HRP page here.

Critical Appraisal Modules 2019
This YouTube playlist includes seven modules that address critical appraisal concepts and methods for six different research designs. Published by Cochrane Mental Health.

Critical Appraisal of an RCT using CASP
A series of bite-sized videos taking the viewer through the process of appraising a randomised controlled trial using the CASP checklist, question by question. Produced by the team at Barts Health Knowledge and Library Services.

PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis)

The PRISMA documents are designed to help authors transparently report why their systematic review was done, what methods they used, and what they found. The flow diagram helps authors describe the different phases of a literature review, including the numbers of records identified, screened and reasons for including and exclusing from the final paper. 

The Equator Network

The EQUATOR (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research) Network seeks to improve the reliability of health research by promoting accurate reporting and the use of reporting guidelines. This resource contains a comprehensive database of reporting guidelines that covers the main study types.