This document provides guidance on how to effectively prepare and present a journal club. It recommends choosing a relevant clinical research article and using tools to appraise the article critically. The presentation should be no more than 15 minutes and include a 4-page handout summarizing the key points of the article for attendees. Journal clubs aim to promote evidence-based practice and critical evaluation skills by discussing published research.

1. How to Prepare an Effective Journal
Club Presentation
Ron Lyon, MS, RPH

2. Learning objectives
At the completion of this assignment, you should
understand how to:
 Create a concise and interesting handout related to
an article of interest.
 Deliver an engaging presentation of that article in no
more than 15 minutes.

3. Why have a journal club?
 Provide a forum to critically evaluate and discuss
clinical impact of published research on clinical
practice
 Promote evidence-based practice
 Develop drug literature evaluation skills
 Teach critical appraisal skills
 Keep up with professional literature

4. What is a journal club?
 Group of individuals that regularly meet to critically
evaluate pertinent academic articles
 Here’s Wikipedia’s history section:
 The earliest references to a journal club was found in a book of
memoirs and letters by the late Sir James Paget, a British
surgeon, who describes a group at St. Bartholomew's
Hospital in London in the mid-19th century as "a kind of club ...
a small room over a baker's shop near the Hospital-gate where
we could sit and read the journals."[5]
 Sir William Osler established the first formalized journal club
at McGill University in Montreal in 1875. The original purpose of
Osler's journal club was "for the purchase and distribution
of periodicals to which he could ill afford to subscribe."[6]
 Tinsley Harrison, the famous creator of Harrison's Principles of
Internal Medicine hosted a journal club at his house twice a
month where one member of the group would present a
research paper and the others would criticize it.[7]

5. Journal club formats
 Review a single comparative trial (using a
checklist to evaluate internal validity and
applicability in practice)
 Debate style (pros/cons of a particular
intervention)
 Compare a recent article with a “classic” article
on the same topic
 Choose by study design to discuss strengths
and weaknesses of the type of design (e.g.,
prospective, retrospective, case report, or
meta-analysis)

6. Key points for ensuring a
successful journal club

7. Choosing an article
 Article considerations
 Should be relevant to the clinical practice of the
participants
 Should answer a clinical question
 Should provide new knowledge
 Journal considerations
 Scope, impact factor, target audience, peer
review process

8. Tools for appraising an article
 Checklists available through:
 Pharmacist’s Letter, Cochrane Library, and NERD-CAT
 Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials
(CONSORT)
 Randomized controlled trials, cluster trials, non-inferiority
and equivalence trials, pragmatic trials
 Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and
Meta-Analyses (PRISMA)
 We use the RCT Article Review on Blackboard

9. Virtual journal clubs
 http://wikijournalclub.org/wiki/Main_Page

10. Twitter journal clubs
Name Date Twitter ID Hashtag
Twitter Journal Club May 2011 @twitjournalclub #twitjc
Public Health Twitter Journal
Club
August 2011 @PHTwitJC #PHTwitJC
Microbiology Twitter Journal
Club
May 2012 @microtwjc #microtwjc
St Emyn's Journal Club October 2012 @JC_StE #JC_StE
Urology November 2012 @iurojc #urojc
Hospice and Palliative Care
medicine
February 2013 @hpmjc #hpmjc
Respiratory and Sleep
Medicine
October 2013 @respandsleepjc #rsjc
Academic Life in Emergency
Medicine Journal Club
November 2013 @M_Lin #ALiEMJC
General Surgery February 2014 @igsjc #igsjc
Primary Care Medicine Journal
Club
February 2014 @pcmjc #pcmjc
Allergy March 2014 @alleryjc #allergyjc
Nephrology April 2014 @nephjc #nephjc

11. Journal club tasks
 Review the documents in the Journal Club folder on
Blackboard
 Condition assignments at the end of this presentation
 Do a PubMed search and select a very recent, randomized
clinical trial article to review
 Send to me for approval along with the PubMed search term
details
 Start working individually and as a group
 Use the RCT Article Review document to begin evaluation of
the article
 Once you complete the RCT Article Review start transferring
that information to the Journal Club Presentation worksheet.
This will help you gather the information you want to use in
your handout and presentation
 Make sure to review the Journal Club Evaluation rubric

12. Journal club handout
 Review the Improving Journal Club
Presentations document for tips on how to prepare
your presentation.
 Create your 4-page handout. You will provide copies
of this to your fellow students and the instructors
during your presentation.
 Use online tools to check grammar and readability
 www.grammarly.com
 Add-ins for both Word and Outlook
 www.polishmywriting.com
 Readability formulas

13. Journal club presentation
 You will have no more than 15 minutes to present to the
class.
 There will be time for questions and answers after that.
 Assume we will have some tough questions ready for you.
 You may choose one (I) person to present from your
group but make sure you to help them prepare and
rehearse.
 After introducing yourself and your article the first
statement should tell the group why we should even
bother listening to your presentation.
 Guide us to key points within the document.
 Your last statement should tell the group how this article
changes our current thinking and what actions we should
consider taking.

14. PowerPoint
 DO NOT create a PowerPoint presentation for this
assignment
 Susan McConnell (Stanford): Designing effective
scientific presentations
 Video