Novel Debate-Style Cardiothoracic Surgery Journal Club: Results of a Pilot Curriculum

Background Traditional journal clubs addressing single articles are limited by the lack of a standardized process for conduct and evaluation. We developed a novel, debate-style journal club for trainees to use best available evidence to address controversial topics in cardiothoracic surgery through discussion of realistic patient scenarios. Methods After implementation of our new curriculum, trainee knowledge acquisition and retention were assessed by a summative test of published literature and standardized debate scoring. Feedback was additionally obtained by trainee and faculty surveys. Results Cardiothoracic surgery trainees (n = 4) participated in five debates each over 10 monthly sessions. Written examination results after debate revealed a nonsignificant improvement in scores on topics that were debated compared with topics that were not (+9.8% versus −4.2%, p  = 0.105). Trainee ability to sway the debate position supported by the attendee strongly correlated with trainee use of supporting literature ( r  = 0.853), moderately correlated with persuasiveness ( r  = 0.465), and overall effect of the debate ( r  = 0.625). Surveys completed by trainees and faculty unanimously favored the debate-style journal club as compared to the traditional journal club in gaining familiarity and applying published literature to questions encountered clinically. Conclusions Our novel debate-style cardiothoracic surgery journal club is an effective educational intervention for cardiothoracic surgery trainees to acquire, retain, and gain practice in applying specialty-specific literature-based evidence to controversial case-based issues. Evaluation by multi-institutional expansion is needed to validate our preliminary findings in this initial trainee cohort.