Journal Clubs in Sports Medicine Fellowship Programs: Results From a National Survey and Recommendations for Quality Improvement.

BACKGROUND: Journal club is a pervasive component of graduate medical education, yet there is no gold standard as to format and logistics.

METHODS: Survey of primary care sports medicine fellowship directors in the United States.

RESULTS: Sixty-nine program directors completed the online questionnaire (40% response rate). There were some common aspects to journal club exhibited by a majority of programs, including the general format, required attendance by fellows and expected or required attendance by faculty, the expectation that participants had at least read the article before the meeting, and that meetings occurred during the workday in the work setting without provision of food. There was considerable variation on other aspects, including the objectives of journal club, who had primary responsibility for organizing the session, the criteria for selection of articles, who was invited to attend, and the perceived problems with journal club.

CONCLUSIONS: This is the first survey investigating the current state of journal club in primary care sports medicine fellowship programs. Several opportunities for educational enhancements exist within journal clubs in primary care sports medicine, including the use of structured tools to guide discussion, providing mechanisms to evaluate the journal club experience as a whole, inviting multidisciplinary team members (eg, statisticians) to discussions, and ensuring that objectives are explicitly stated to participants.