This document provides guidelines for a journal club organized by the Department of Anesthesiology. It discusses the history and purpose of journal clubs, which are educational meetings where researchers critically evaluate and discuss new research publications. The document outlines the steps for journal club presentations, including choosing an article, evaluating it, and delivering a presentation within 60 minutes followed by 15 minutes of discussion. Presenters are advised to select original research from reputable journals and evaluate the study design, results, and conclusions. The presentation should summarize the article and provide the presenter's own analysis and critique to facilitate discussion.

1. DR. RAVIKIRAN
Post graduate student
Department of anesthesiology.
JOURNAL CLUB

2. INDEX
• History and introduction
• WHY JOURNAL CLUB?
• Guidelines
• Steps
– Choosing the article
– Evaluating the article
– Presentation.
• Slides

3. JOURNAL CLUB
Sir William Osler in 1877 first started it.
Journal club is a monthly event for the review & critical
appraisal of key publications of importance to clinical evidence
based medical practice.
It is an educational meeting in which a group of individuals
discuss published articles, to keep themselves abreast of new
knowledge, promoting awareness of current research findings,
teaching them to critique & encourage them to utilize research
in evidence based practice.

4. PURPOSE OF THESE PRESENTATIONS
1. To highlight new finding
2. To develop skills in research article analysis, finding new art
icle.
3. To develop skills in professional presentations.
4. To improve communication skills, leadership skill & debatin
g skills
5. To increase knowledge on any topic of interest.

5. GUIDELINES FOR JOURNAL CLUB
•The presentation should be planned with-in the stipulated time generally 60min & t
he last 15minutes shall be dedicated for discussion.
•Discussion during presentations is not encouraged.
•All questions shall be directed to the presenter and his fellow colleague students (as
indicated) in the last 15 minutes.
•Potential research articles from peer reviewed journals & having high rejection rate.
•Should be original research as opposed to a review article or consensus paper
•Article selection & approval by the programme faculty- one month prior to the jour
nal club
•Number of slides and its contents should be scientifically tailored to the topic and ti
me allocated

6. STEPS
1. Choosing the article.
2. Evaluating the article.
3. Presentation.

7. CHOOSING THE ARTICLE
• Choose a paper that you find interesting.
• Articles which draw editorial comment, well known institutions or respected a
uthors, are generally good quality articles and usually worthy of presentation.
• Avoid reviews, editorials or viewpoint articles wherever possible.
• A prospective study, provides better discussion points than retrospective. Retro
spective studies, do not always provide robust answers to clinical questions. Th
ey often raise questions which are then answered by prospective studies.
• Thus prospective studies will usually provide more significant additions to the
medical literature than the majority of retrospective studies.

8. 1. Choose a good journal with a very high rejection rate.
2. Look at the name of the institution, as a rule, good papers tend to co
me from good institutions as they do not let sub-standard research go o
ut for peer review. It is less likely that good hard science will come fro
m an unknown institution
3. Look at the author’s name, you may know the author and his/her ver
acity. Good authors are conscious about their reputation and do not len
d their name to substandard research

9. 4. Look at the bottom of the first page or the end note of the paper for grant supp
ort. A paper which has received ICMR or NIH funding, probably had, at its ince
ption, had a strong proposal and the senior author enjoys the faith of prestigious
organisations such as ICMR or NIH
5. Immediately below the author names, there is often a note about whether this
paper was awarded by an organisation or presented at an international meeting.
An award paper from APSI or BAPS will invariably be a good one. A paper acce
pted for podium presentation at an international conference passes through strict
scrutiny and is often the chosen one
6. Look at the dates of submission and acceptance – if the gap is small, this is a
good paper which obtained the nod of the reviewers and got accepted without re
visions. As against it, a long gap means multiple revisions
7. Many journals have articles for the forthcoming issue on their website, and so
the paper and letters to the editor in response to it can appear in the same issue.

10. EVALUATING THE ARTICLE
a. Background of the article
– i. What is the purpose of the article and is the question posed clearly stated?
– ii. What is the hypothesis which underpins the research?
b. Study design
– 1. What are the criteria for entry into the study?
– 2. Was it prospective or retrospective?
– 3. Was it randomised or non-randomised?
– 4. How was it controlled eg. Case control, historical controls, and were these
appropriate?
– 5. If a crossover design was used, was it appropriate?
– 6. If an assessment of an observation was required, was it made "subjectively
" by one of the authors or objectively by an independent blinded observer?

11. c. Execution of the study
– 1. Is the sample size adequate?
– 2. Are there confounding variables?
– 3. What was the attrition rate of the subjects in the study and was follow-up a
dequate?
– 4. Were the statistics appropriate?
d. .Assessment of Conclusions
– 1. Do the findings in this study support the conclusions?
– 2. What is the clinical significance as against statistical
– 3. significance of the study?
– 4. Application of the Study
– 5. Is the information helpful to the current practice
– 6. Does it present ideas for future research?

12. PRESENTATION
•approximately 40 minutes
•20min extra time will be allotted for moderator discussion
•Study background:
• Rationale & clinical relevance for study question
• Preclinical and clinical research that lead to current trail
•Study methodology and results
•Author’s Discussion-results, conclusion
•Article critique-bias, funding, affiliation, editorial commentary, risks & benefits
•Conclusions, implications & future directions: restate authors take home message fo
llowed by your own interpretation. Personal perspective for selecting this paper. Clin
ical utility of Results.

13. •Presentation of the core content of the article (summarize the article)
– ―The article I am presenting is ______‖ and preview the conclusion.
– Optional – give some background about the topic
– ―The hypothesis was….‖
– ―The methods were…‖
– ―The results were…‖
– ―The authors discussion / interpretation / conclusion was that …‖

14. Then present your impression of the article in support or contrast to the authors
conclusions
•―The design was appropriate / poorly thought out / etc…‖
•―The sample size was large enough / too small / etc…‖
•―The article clearly mentioned its flaws / was missing / etc…‖
•―The significance of this article was…‖
•―I felt that this article…‖
•―Similar research articles present corroborating / conflicting….‖
•―Further research…‖

15. Moderator discussion
•Take questions and provide thoughtful answers.
•You may or may not know the answer, but handling questions is an important part o
f effective presentations.
•Facilitate comments and contributions.
•Remember that some attendees may be quite knowledgeable about this topic. Their
comments can contribute to the presentation and enrich the learning experience for t
hose that attendee, as well as yourself.

16. Evaluation
•presentation skills
o Verbal
o visual
•organization,
•appropriate discussion of the manuscript
•personal conclusions,
•facilitation of the discussion.

17. SLIDES
KEEP SLIDES SIMPLE —and explain with words where necessary.
o There is a ―six line‖ rule for slides—more lines make for cluttered slides.
o Do not read directly from your slides. It is more effective to elaborate verbally on
what is written on the slides.
o Talk to your audience! It improves every presentation if you make eye contact with
your audience.
o Never turn your back to the audience
o If you cannot remember something, do not try to hide it.
o Arouse curiosity of the audience by identifying unexpected events/findings, sugges
ting provocative ideas.