Loyola University Medical Center
Maywood, IL
Program Description
We have a 3 year fellowship program and we take 4 Fellows per year. Loyola University medical Center is affiliated to the Stritch School of Medicine. We are a tertiary care center with a level 1 trauma center. We have a successful lung tranaplant program which is the busiest in the state of Illinois. Our fellows do 2 year of clinical work and spend 9-12 months in research.
Type of Program
Pulmonary and Critical Care
Number of Fellows in Program
12
Submitter(s) of Abstract
Program Director: Sunita Kumar, MD
Many of us are pressed for time when it comes to reviewing all the pertinent publications of our field and restrict reading to one or two journals at the most. Journal reading is an important aspect of Fellowship training to enhance Fellows’ ability to critically review the literature. ACGME currently requires Fellows to participate in a monthly Journal Conference. Due to clinical responsibilities, off-site rotations, Fellows are sometimes unable to attend this conference regularly. Fellows present weekly at Journal Club at our institution where they present 2 articles each, one of which is from the AJRCCM. Each Fellow presents about 2-3 times in the year. However, their exposure to other journals and their self-reading of the monthly core journals appears to be deficient despite this weekly learning activity. I conducted a survey to evaluate Fellows’ journal reading practice. 8 of the 12 fellows responded to the survey. The results of this survey were:
• Most commonly read journals were CHEST (87.5%) and AJRCCM (75%)
• 6 out of 8 fellows (85.7%) read less than 3 articles per journal issue
• 5 out of 8 (62.5%) were not at all satisfied, 2 (25%) were somewhat satisfied and 1 was very satisfied with their current reading practice
• All of them (100%) cited lack of time as the most important reason for their limited reading
• 7 of 8 (87.5%) indicated that they were more likely to read a few relevant articles from different journals if these were pointed out to them
I aired the idea of creating an internal publication “Loyola PCCM Journal Watch” to my Fellows. I got a “conditional approval” for 6 months. Some of the Fellows felt that this should replace the weekly Journal Club, but were willing to give it a try. Fellows were assigned to read a different journal each month. They email the summaries of at least 2 articles to me by the 15th of the following month. They also listed interesting review articles worth reading from these journals. For instance, they reviewed the AJRCCM September 1st and 15th issues and submitted their summaries by email to me by October 15th. I would then compile the summaries and release the PDF to all the faculty and fellows. I conducted a follow up survey after 2 summaries went out. 8 of 12 (67%) Fellows responded and the results are shown in Table 1.
The monthly publication was well received among the faculty and the fellows. Personally, I became aware of interesting articles, which I might not have had the chance to review myself, but for this publication. It also allowed the Fellows to review other journals they were not in the habit of reading.
Journal offers a wealth of information, both in terms of original research papers and review articles. Practices established during this period will likely shape the reading habits post Fellowship. This exercise of journal review increased exposure of the Fellows to journals and articles that could not be achieved through a monthly or weekly Journal Club.
