Burn Center Journal Club Promotes Clinical Research, Continuing Education, and Evidence-based Practice

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to characterize the structure, policy, implementation, and outcome measures of a burn team journal club to assess its effectiveness in promoting multidisciplinary education relative to research competency, clinical knowledge, and evidence-based practice. After 2 years of a new multidisciplinary format, an anonymous quality assurance survey was distributed to staff members of a regional pediatric burn center to evaluate the impact of the journal club on clinical and research indicators. The 24 journal club meetings evaluated in this study included a variety of topics, among which were wound healing, infection, nutrition, metabolism, sleep, medications, alternative medicine, research compliance, and child abuse. The speakers included a variety of hospital personnel: 26% researchers, 23% physicians, 20% registered nurses, and 31% other disciplines and attendance mean was 29 participants per session (range 17-50). Survey results from 30 respondents indicated that 100% judged the program to be valuable to personal educational needs and 83% indicated that format did not warrant change. According to self-report data, the journal club enhanced medical knowledge (90%), patient care (73%), research competency (70%), critical thinking (63%), and evidence-based practice (63%). Results indicate that the journal club program was well received by participants, and promoted enhanced knowledge and improved patient care. In the future, barriers to research initiatives and integration of research findings into practice warrant follow-up study. Journal club should be incorporated into the learning curriculum of burn practitioners as a means to promote critical thinking, research competency, and evidence-based clinical practice.