This post is to help guide the nurse educator on the creation of an online journal club for healthcare practitioners, and focuses on the theory of initiation and engagement aspects. Reasons for a journal club could be to increase uptake of evidence based practice, changing culture, improving patient outcomes or education development.
To Do List
- Outline of the purpose of the journal club.
- Set some short and long term goals.
- Set up regular meeting dates- routines help.
- Voluntary or mandatory attendance?
- Closed or public journal club?
- A journal club leader to facilitate discussion.
- Set a code of conduct for respectful discussion.
- Determine process to choose topics of the papers.
- Flipped classroom- circulating papers prior to the meeting.
- Decide on a critical appraisal process.
- Managing the online resource and enable sharing for those not able to attend.
- Inclusive: providing training or resources for those nurses not familiar with the online journal club resources.
Practicalities
It is advisable to share and discuss articles on one platform for simple access for participants and to focus all discussion in one area. The articles and links could be shared via a learning management system, blog, Wiki resource, Google+ community, Twitter or a Facebook group. Limiting the number of social media tools also reduces the facilitators workload. Deciding on the privacy settings should be decided by the facilitators, remembering that workplace and nursing have code of conducts and you will be the moderator. The copyright rules for sharing publications will have to be followed as well, so use hyperlinks to the relevant journal page for participants to access or consider using open access articles. Having a journal club code of conduct with information regarding confidentiality, engagement and respect is advisable.
Critical Appraisal Tools
- The Joanna Briggs Institute
- Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP)
- BestBets
- How to read a paper: the basics of evidence-based medicine
References
AMA Wire (2015) Wikipedia meets medical research? Rise of the online journal club.
Chan, T. M., Thoma, B., Radecki, R., Topf, J., Woo, H. H., Kao, L. S., … & Lin, M. (2015). Ten steps for setting up an online journal club. Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions, 35(2), 148-154.
Deenadayalan, Y., Grimmer‐Somers, K., Prior, M., & Kumar, S. (2008). How to run an effective journal club: a systematic review. Journal of evaluation in clinical practice, 14(5), 898-911.
Greenhalgh, T. (2001). How to read a paper: the basics of evidence-based medicine. (2nd ed.) BMJ Publishing.
Greenhalgh, T. (2014). How to read a paper: the basics of evidence-based medicine.(4th ed.) John Wiley & Sons.
Intensive Care Network (2017) How to make journal club work.
Wiki Journal Club (2017) https://www.wikijournalclub.org/wiki/Main_Page