20th June 2006

I will be presenting the journal article titled "Modernizing the Journal Club". Citation details are at this webaddress http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10962660&dopt=Abstract This is a summary of the article: Educational should be about "Deep Learning" which is a process of learning that builds on existing knowledge and constructs new knowledge. Critical appraisal helps the person make sense of information or a subject. This contrasts to "Surface Learning" which is memorising and repeating information, that is easily forgotten. The authors of the article suggest traditional journal clubs use the "surface learning" approach. Suggested new format for journal clubs: Use a "guided discovery approach, which puts the learning process in the context of clinical problem solving". The steps involved: Identify a problem search the literature appraise the evidence store the information for future use Authors assessed the impact of this new approach after 4 months and found an increase in reading time, and knowledge of the critical literature appraisal. Although the journal club in this article was discussing research based articles, and our club isn't limited to research based articles, I think the approach is a good one. Use the journal club as an opportunity for problem solving. It is an Evidence Based approach.