Anecdotally we found that participants did not feel that their reading time had significantly increased. However, their reading time was more focused, critical and across a much wider range of journals. Overall the members of the group consider the journal club to be a success, and an effective use of the limited amount of time available for private study in a busy emergency department. We have not assessed the impact of the journal club on clinical practice and patient care within the department as no data was collected prior to the development of the journal club system. Anecdotally lessons learned from BETs and structured journal scans have been implemented within the department.
Emergency medicine has close links with a large number of other specialities.
It is important that evidence used in the emergency department is shared with in hospital specialities and on call teams. We believe that the construction and dissemination of the BET's can aid this inter-speciality liaison and improve clinical practice. Conclusion Traditional methods of instituting evidence based medicine are not applicable to the emergency department setting. A structured journal club was designed to teach critical appraisal, keep abreast of developments in the field of emergency medicine and institute evidence based medicine in this setting. A proactive approach to EBM is necessary in emergency medicine.