Effect of Evidence Based Medicine Training in the Quality of Journal Clubs: A Road to Evidence Based Journal Clubs

Introduction: Journal clubs play an important role in teaching Evidence Based Medicine (EBM). Evidence based journal clubs focus on real problems of the group, and set a minimum level of evidence for articles to be presented, and in the end a clinical bottom line is set to be used in the daily clinical practice. In this article, we have explained our experience in running evidence based journal clubs in the previous year and the challenges in the path of this goal are discussed. Methods: Before starting the evidence based journal clubs, we set up several lectures on EBM for the teachers of the research center as well as the residents. From September 2010 to November 2010, we ran the journal clubs of our research center by a two-session plan: first identifying an important clinical question, second presenting the best available evidence. The assigned levels of evidence for evidence based journal clubs as well as previous traditional one were compared. Results: Twelve journal clubs were presented in the study period: Five systematic reviews, 2 guidelines, 3 narrative review articles, and 2 individual articles. Ten out of 12 traditional journal club articles were narrative review articles and 2 were clinical guidelines. 41.6% of the evidence based journal clubs were assigned level 1 of evidence. In contrast 83.3% of traditional journal clubs were in the 4 level of evidence. Conclusion: Evidence based journal clubs can be very useful in improving the quality of presented articles in the journal clubs and are invaluable for teaching EBM.