Purpose
Journal Club is intended to help fellows get comfortable critically evaluating the GI literature, stay up to date on important studies, and have useful discussion with faculty about how new data
should—or should not—change practice. The point is not to give a comprehensive summary of every detail in a paper. It is to understand the question the authors were trying to answer, whether the study actually answered it, and what we should take away from the results.
Presenter Responsibilities
- Pick an article early
- Please choose your article well before your assigned Journal Club date. In general, this should be a primary research article rather than a review. Papers that are clinically relevant, potentially practice-changing, controversial, or just methodologically interesting usually work best. Please also try to choose articles that are recent (within the past 3-4 years). If you are unsure about a paper, send it to the Journal Club leaders (Dr. Lloyd and Dr. Glissen-Brown). It is much easier to help early than a few days before the session.
- Find a faculty discussant
- Each presenter is responsible for inviting a faculty member with expertise or interest in the topic.Please reach out early enough that they have time to review the paper and plan to attend. To ensure a diverse pool of faculty discussants, please reach out to Dr. Glissen Brown and Dr. Lloyd before you confirm with the faculty discussant. This should be at least 2 weeks before your scheduled lecture date, but the earlier the better. If you are not sure who would be a good fit, we can help identify someone.
- Send us the article and discussant information
- Once you have chosen the paper and confirmed a faculty discussant, send both to the Journal Club leaders. Ideally, we will distribute the article about a week before the session so people have a reasonable chance to read it beforehand but please screen your article and potential discussant with Dr. Glissen Brown and Dr. Lloyd at least 2 weeks before your presentation (preferably 1 month before).
- Prepare the presentation
- Your presentation should cover enough background and study detail to allow the group to critically discuss the paper.
- Please be prepared to address:
- Relevant background in the field of interest leading up to the study question
- Why the clinical question matters
- The basic study design and methodology
- Please include an Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) slide. The EBM topic should generally be different every week (e.g. why we generally don’t include P values with table 1s in an RCT, a review of survival analysis, ITT vs per protocol analysis etc.)
- The primary outcome and the most important secondary outcomes
- Major strengths and limitations
- Whether the results are clinically meaningful
- How the study might affect practice or future research
- There is no need to go through every table, subgroup analysis, or supplementary figure. Focus on the parts of the paper that matter.
- Leave room for discussion
- Journal Club should be a discussion, not a straight lecture. Fellows should aim for 10-15 minutes of presentation time to allow for adequate discussion time. Ask the group what they think. Point out parts of the study that are debatable. Think about whether the results actually apply to our patients and whether they would change anything we do at Duke.
- Useful questions include:
- Do we believe the results?
- What are the biggest limitations?
- Is the effect clinically meaningful, or just statistically significant?
- Does the study population look like our patients?
- Would this change your practice?
- Does it fit with current guidelines and the rest of the literature?
- What would you want the next study to answer?
Faculty Discussant
The faculty discussant should review the article beforehand and help put the paper in context. Their role is not to give a second presentation. Ideally, they can add clinical or methodological
perspective, discuss how the study fits with the existing literature, and help push the discussion beyond what is written in the paper.
Attendance and Participation
Fellows should make an effort to read the article before Journal Club and participate in the discussion. We also want strong faculty participation. Having faculty with different areas of expertise in the room makes the discussion substantially better and is something program leadership has specifically identified as a priority.
If You Need Help
Please reach out if you are having trouble choosing a paper, finding a faculty discussant, or figuring out how to approach the presentation. We are happy to help with article selection, faculty pairings, presentation structure, or discussion questions.
