Community & Oral Health Library: Journal Club

Is your workplace discussing implementation of evidence-based practice? Are you interested in improving patient outcomes? Then organizing a group of your peers to develop a journal club is a great idea! A formal journal club facilitates discussing and evaluating new research and its application to practice and improving patient care. The advantages of using a journal club are that you and your peers can keep current with new clinical knowledge, learn to evaluate the strength of evidence, promote implementation of new knowledge into practice, and improve patient outcomes - in addition to providing new social and networking opportunities. In its most basic form, a club would consist of:

1. A facilitator for the meeting (Initially, this could be a clinical educator, clinical nurse specialist, nurse practitioner, nurse manager, or senior staff member, with journal club members then taking turns to lead subsequent journal club sessions.)
2. Select a convenient meeting time and location.
3. Post and distribute copies of the selected research article and discussion questions prior to each meeting.
4. Encourage active participation of those attending by using written discussion questions.
5. Evaluate the journal club. At the end of the session, gather feedback from participants.
6. Set the date for the next club meeting.