title: Impact of a medical journal club on house-staff reading habits, knowledge, and critical appraisal skills. A randomized control trial.
abstract: The journal club is an established teaching modality in many house-staff training programs. To determine if a journal club improves house-staff reading habits, knowledge of epidemiology and biostatistics, and critical appraisal skills, we randomized 44 medical interns to receive either a journal club or a control seminar series. A test instrument developed by the Delphi method was administered before and after the interventions (mean, five journal club sessions). By self-report, 86% of the house staff in the journal club group improved their reading habits vs 0% in the control group. Knowledge scores increased more in the journal club group than in the control group, and a trend was found toward more knowledge gained as more sessions were attended. Ability to appraise critically a test article increased slightly in each group, but there was no significant difference between the groups. We conclude that a journal club is a powerful motivator of critical house-staff reading behavior and can help teach epidemiology and biostatistics to physicians-in-training.
mesh_terms: D001699:Biometry; D003697:Delphi Technique; D004521:Educational Measurement; D004812:Epidemiologic Methods; D006801:Humans; D007396:Internship and Residency; D010506:Periodicals as Topic; D011897:Random Allocation; D011932:Reading; D013663:Teaching / Q000379:methods*