Clinical Practitioners' Attitudes Concerning the Value of Peer-Reviewed Clinical Case Reports: An Opinion Survey

Abstract

ABSTRACTDevelopment and advancement of academic clinical faculty is vital to maintaining excellence in pharmacy teaching; promotions and tenure (or promotion in the case of non-tenure-track faculty) is an essential part of this development. In most schools, promotion and tenure committees generally weigh the peer-reviewed case report as having little significance for scholarship. We undertook an opinion survey of clinical pharmacists to determine whether these reports affect patient care and whether end-users ascribe to them the properties generally accorded scholarly work. Five hundred practitioners were surveyed by mail with questions regarding their practice and their opinions and use of case reports. These pharmacists generally indicated that, although research reports are superior to case reports in routine clinical situations, case reports indeed contribute useful new knowledge to the profession, and they appear to have high expectations for the intellectual integrity of these publications. Most of ...