Critical Appraisals at Play

NCT ID: NCT07126314

Last Updated: 2025-08-17

Study Results

Results pending

The study team has not published outcome measurements, participant flow, or safety data for this trial yet. Check back later for updates.

Basic Information

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Recruitment Status

ENROLLING_BY_INVITATION

Clinical Phase

NA

Total Enrollment

36 participants

Study Classification

INTERVENTIONAL

Study Start Date

2025-08-13

Study Completion Date

2026-06-10

Brief Summary

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Pre and Post assessment of knowledge and attitudes on critical appraisal of biomedical literature in Emergency Medicine practice in a cohort of residents with implementation of a competition based educational format.

Detailed Description

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During the academic year of 2025-2026, the 36 Emergency Medicine residents of a community medicine affiliate of a tertiary medical center will be compete against each other during the journal club didactic. Three residents will be assigned each month, one from each year, to select a journal article matching the curricular content block of that month. Residents will submit their selected article after faculty approval.

Residents will submit their critiques of the journal articles prior to the scheduled journal club via a dedicated residency website. They will focus on potential methodological flaws of the article. This is congruent to how journal club didactics were focused in the past in the institution, so second and third years will have had exposure to this approach.

During journal club, besides having the resident that selected the article briefly present it, resident critiques will be discussed. A single point will be awarded to each resident for each critique they have submitted. For critiques of significant merit, as determined by the faculty, the journal club facilitator will invite the submitting resident to discuss their critique, and will be awarded 2 points. To discourage artificial intelligence (AI) use without learning, critiques will be selected at faculty discretion to be orally explained during journal club to the satisfaction of the faculty. The faculty have determined that if residents utilize AI as a tool to enhance their learning (instead of simply enumerating critiques blindly on a document), this is in service towards the goal of journal club, and should be encouraged.

As a reward, residents that have the highest running score will receive $100 Amazon gift cards, tiered by 1st, 2nd, and 3rd year academic status.

Attitudes towards the importance of critical assessment of scientific literature, self assessments of fluency in scientific literature appraisal, and the effectiveness of journal club, will be conducted via anonymous survey on RedCap at the beginning and end of the academic year. The survey utilized will be the modified version of a previously validated survey used by Haspel2. Additionally, residents will be assigned Journal Club based quizzes from Rosh Review13, a platform tailored for resident education, at the beginning and end of the year. Rosh Review provides comparative benchmarks that can be used to assess resident performance.

Conditions

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Medical Education

Study Design

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Allocation Method

NA

Intervention Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Pre and Post Intervention
Primary Study Purpose

OTHER

Blinding Strategy

NONE

Study Groups

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Residency Cohort

Full complement of site emergency medicine residents

Group Type EXPERIMENTAL

Competition based Education Format

Intervention Type OTHER

Residents will be organized into 3 teams, each competing to amass points for critiquing articles presented during journal club, for a prize.

Interventions

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Competition based Education Format

Residents will be organized into 3 teams, each competing to amass points for critiquing articles presented during journal club, for a prize.

Intervention Type OTHER

Eligibility Criteria

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Inclusion Criteria

* All emergency medicine residents at study site

Exclusion Criteria

* none
Minimum Eligible Age

18 Years

Eligible Sex

ALL

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Sponsors

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Community Medical Center, Toms River, NJ

OTHER

Sponsor Role lead

Responsible Party

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Greg Neyman

Principal Investigator

Responsibility Role PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Locations

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Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Barnabas Health Community Medical Center

Toms River, New Jersey, United States

Site Status

Countries

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United States

References

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McLeod RS, MacRae HM, McKenzie ME, Victor JC, Brasel KJ; Evidence Based Reviews in Surgery Steering Committee. A moderated journal club is more effective than an Internet journal club in teaching critical appraisal skills: results of a multicenter randomized controlled trial. J Am Coll Surg. 2010 Dec;211(6):769-76. doi: 10.1016/j.jamcollsurg.2010.08.016. Epub 2010 Oct 29.

Reference Type BACKGROUND
PMID: 21036071 (View on PubMed)

Horneff, J, Baldwin, K, Ahn, J.. "The Value of Journal Clubs in Orthopaedic Resident Education." (2010). University of Pennsylvania Orthopedic Journal

Reference Type BACKGROUND

Dzara K, Frey-Vogel AS. Medical Education Journal Club for the Millennial Resident: An Interactive, No-Prep Approach. Acad Pediatr. 2019 Aug;19(6):603-607. doi: 10.1016/j.acap.2019.05.004. Epub 2019 May 14.

Reference Type BACKGROUND
PMID: 31100347 (View on PubMed)

Allon S, Baggett A, Hayes B, Glosemeyer K, Cavo J, Pacha R, Zurko J, Patel N, Kraemer R. Association of a Gamified Journal Club on Internal Medicine Residents' Engagement and Critical Appraisal Skills. J Grad Med Educ. 2023 Aug;15(4):475-480. doi: 10.4300/JGME-D-22-00812.1.

Reference Type BACKGROUND
PMID: 37637345 (View on PubMed)

Moharari RS, Rahimi E, Najafi A, Khashayar P, Khajavi MR, Meysamie AP. Teaching critical appraisal and statistics in anesthesia journal club. QJM. 2009 Feb;102(2):139-41. doi: 10.1093/qjmed/hcn131. Epub 2008 Oct 8.

Reference Type BACKGROUND
PMID: 18842683 (View on PubMed)

Luc JGY, Fowler CS, Eisenberg SB, Estrera AL, Wolf RK, Choi CW, Lawton JS, Martin LW, Nesbitt JC, Reznik SI, Nguyen TC, Vaporciyan AA, Antonoff MB; Thoracic Education Cooperative Group (TECoG). Multiinstitutional Evaluation of a Debate-Style Journal Club for Cardiothoracic Surgery Trainees. Ann Thorac Surg. 2022 Jul;114(1):327-333. doi: 10.1016/j.athoracsur.2021.07.104. Epub 2021 Sep 20.

Reference Type BACKGROUND
PMID: 34547299 (View on PubMed)

Linzer M, Brown JT, Frazier LM, DeLong ER, Siegel WC. Impact of a medical journal club on house-staff reading habits, knowledge, and critical appraisal skills. A randomized control trial. JAMA. 1988 Nov 4;260(17):2537-41.

Reference Type BACKGROUND
PMID: 3050179 (View on PubMed)

Wegleitner, Elizabeth and Octavio R Chirino. "Join the Club: Integration of the CREOG Journal Club Curriculum Improves OBGYN Residents Statistical Literacy." Obstetrics & Gynecology (2019): 134():p 48S, October 2019

Reference Type BACKGROUND

Hartzell JD, Veerappan GR, Posley K, Shumway NM, Durning SJ. Resident run journal club: a model based on the adult learning theory. Med Teach. 2009 Apr;31(4):e156-61. doi: 10.1080/01421590802516723.

Reference Type BACKGROUND
PMID: 19404887 (View on PubMed)

Arti Muley, J. Lakhani "Evidence based vs traditional journal clubs: Time to switchover." The Journal of medical research 2015 1(1): 13-17 https://doi.org/10.31254/jmr.2015.1106

Reference Type BACKGROUND

Haspel RL. Implementation and assessment of a resident curriculum in evidence-based transfusion medicine. Arch Pathol Lab Med. 2010 Jul;134(7):1054-9. doi: 10.5858/2009-0328-OA.1.

Reference Type BACKGROUND
PMID: 20586637 (View on PubMed)

Alavi-Moghaddam M, Yazdani S, Mortazavi F, Chichi S, Hosseini-Zijoud SM. Evidence-based Medicine versus the Conventional Approach to Journal Club Sessions: Which One Is More Successful in Teaching Critical Appraisal Skills? Chonnam Med J. 2016 May;52(2):107-11. doi: 10.4068/cmj.2016.52.2.107. Epub 2016 May 20.

Reference Type BACKGROUND
PMID: 27231674 (View on PubMed)

Other Identifiers

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25-007

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id

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