Twitter Journal Club @JC_StE at St.Emlyn’s

Here in Virchester we have run a journal club for many, many years. In fact we consider ourselves to be one of the founding truly evidence based journal clubs with a history dating back to 1997. The JC at Virchester ED has taught hundreds of docs about critical appraisal and BestBets and we like to think that we have changed the way that EM physicians practice and question their own practice in this part of the world.

Back in 1997 we ran a weekly journal club in the department with great attendance and great involvement, but times change. Our ED got busier and busier with more out of hours work and with a greater senior presence outside of normal working hours, it became increasingly difficult to get everyone together at the same time and the same place so we looked to move from synchronous education to asynchronous methods. We had to develop other ways to teach and learn, primarily through the use of Moodle based classrooms which were (and still are) fantastic, but they are hardly in the spirit of #FOAM, trapped behind passwords and firewalls they are exclusive and restrictive which has led to complaints from colleagues who want to join the party.

We have seen what can be done by others using the Internet and in particular Twitter to spread journal clubs beyond the normal boundaries of departments and hospitals and we have decided to follow a similar path with the St.Emlyn’s journal club. The credit to this has to go to Janos Baombe one of our new consultants and Twitter afficionado, he exemplifies the spirit of international FOAM by joining our journal club from Cameroon (and crashing his car in the process).

 

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/JC_StE/status/261397806126874624″]

 

So what’s it about?

Right,

  • 1. Journal club runs on it’s own channel so get onto your Twitter account and follow @JC_StE now.
  • 2. We will post a paper for discussion towards the beginning of the week.
  • 3. Download and read the paper, review it and see what you think.
  • 4. Join us on Fridays live at 1300-1400 GMT for a live feed or drop in later with comments.
  • 5. We will use these together with a summary of the paper published on the St.Emlyn’s blog later in the week. For example have a look at Rick’s Prezi from last week here.

So come on folks, join the #FOAM party at St.Emlyn’s and join us for JC, you know you want to 🙂

vb

Simon Carley

Cite this article as: Simon Carley, "Twitter Journal Club @JC_StE at St.Emlyn’s," in St.Emlyn's, November 11, 2012, https://www.stemlynsblog.org/twitter-journal-club-jc_ste-at-st-emlyns/.

2 thoughts on “Twitter Journal Club @JC_StE at St.Emlyn’s”

  1. Very interesting approach to Journal Club from an exceptionally evidence-based EM program! This is probably the first fully Twitter Journal Club However, this is NOT the first Twitter Journal Club! That would be @emjclub which is based upon the Washington University School of Medicine EBM program (see http://emed.wustl.edu/content/journalclub/em_journal_club.html) which can be found via a Google search “emergency medicine journal club” or via electronic searches of the TRIP database for topics that we have reviewed.

    The content of @emjclub are fed by BEEM (http://fhs.mcmaster.ca/emergmed/beem.htm) and followed by the Skeptics Guide to Emergency Medicine (http://thesgem.com/). BEEM faculty have lectured around the world, published over 25 peer-reviewed EBM synopses and position papers, written a book (http://www.epmonthly.com/features/current-features/interview-with-chris-carpenter-at-acep-2012-video/), and held leadership positions within the SAEM EBM Interest Group. They have also developed an instrument to ease the “information overload” for EM physicians (see http://www.epmonthly.com/columns/in-my-opinion/information-overload/ AND http://pmid.us/22092904) and to evaluate the overall quality of the BEEM product.

    The attributes of a strong EM-residency EBM curriculum have been defined by GME leaders in our specialty (see http://pmid.us/21199085). Developing “healthy skepticism” (http://www.epmonthly.com/archives/features/secrets-to-healthy-skepticism/) is one essential components of a worthwhile GME EBM curriculum.

    Keep up the strong work in Virchester! We’ll look forward to following your Twitter Journal Club from this side of the pond.

    Christopher Carpenter, MD, MSc
    Washington University in St. Louis
    Director of Evidence Based Medicine

    1. Hi Chris, great to hear from you and be reminded of the great work you do.

      You are right in that that the Twitter extract seems to imply that this is the first EVER JC for EM. Of course it isn’t it is OUR first effort from St.Emlyn’s. Apologies if that was misleading, but it does give us an opportunity to remind people of the Washington program so thanks for that.

      Hope you keep following and we will do likewise.

      vb

      S

Thanks so much for following. Viva la #FOAMed

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