Daily journal club: an education tool in palliative care.

Abstract

Journal clubs are a valuable tool for medical education. This paper describes a unique daily journal club format utilized by our palliative care programme and presents the results of a questionnaire sent to trainees exploring satisfaction with its educational value. We reviewed the number and type of articles presented at the journal club over 1 year. A questionnaire was mailed to participating family medicine residents and palliative care fellows. The number of articles presented over 1 year was 252. Pain and symptom control, psychosocial issues and drugs other than opioids were topics accounting for 72% of the presentations. Half were given by attending physician staff, 38% by trainees and 12% by multidisciplinary visitors. Palliative care fellows indicated significantly higher levels of satisfaction than family medicine residents, particularly in the areas of clinical applicability, acceptability of the daily schedule and overall educational value. The increased emphasis on evidence-based practice in palliative care suggests that a journal club could be a useful educational tool. The results from our experience could be applied to other palliative care programmes.