Impact of a National Journal Club and Letter Writing Session on Improving Medical Students’ Confidence with Critical Appraisal

Abstract

Background

Critical appraisal is an important skill for clinicians of the future which medical students often have limited opportunities to develop. This study aimed to evaluate whether a national journal club session could improve medical students’ confidence with critical appraisal.

Methods

98 medical students attended a critical appraisal lecture and supervised journal article discussions. Junior doctor mentors supported students to submit discussion points as a letter-to-the-editor. An online cross-sectional survey was administered before and after the conference.

Results

74 students responded, reporting increased confidence with critically appraising research articles (median score 2 vs 4, p<0.01) and increased understanding of why critical appraisal was important to their careers (median score 3 vs 5, p<0.01).

Discussion

This is the first study to demonstrate that a single national journal club session can significantly improve UK medical students’ confidence with the critical appraisal process. These opportunities are valued by medical students.

Keywords:

• education
• evidence-based medicine
• scientific letters

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Dr Melyvn Jones for his guidance on this work.

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.