How To Participate

Below are some instructiuons and guidelines on how to contribute to this site. Remember, we’re trying to create a useful, searchable database of current EM literature — something that could aid your decision-making during a shift, or spur some contemplation when reviewing a case.

Commenting on an existing post: If you want to simply comment on someone else’s post, just click “comment” at the bottom — it’s open to anyone, no need to register. Say whether you think a study’s great, bogus, inapplicable, or your own experience with the test / therapy / dianosis / population…

Creating your own post: When you want to make your own post about something you saw in the literature, you need to visit http://www.wordpress.com/signup/ and enter your email. Be sure to specifiy “just a username.” Then, email your account name to me (nickgenes /at/ gmail.com ) and I’ll add it to the list. You’ll be able to login by clicking “login” on the far right (under “Meta”). Unfortunately, I can only add wordpress members, otherwise I could have just added you already. WordPress software is easy to use, it’s a lot like a word processor –you’ll be publishing in no time.

Picking Articles: The papers we cover should be well-conducted studies that have the potential to guide our decision-making, whether in ordering a test or prescribing a medication. The NINDS tPA trial for stroke is a great example of a paper that belongs here. This article on the dangers of falling televisions? Not so much.

How to write up a paper: Ideally, you should apply the same rigor to a post that you do to preparing for journal club. There are many guides available online to help you evaluate an article — use the CAT (Clinically Appraised Topic) or BET (Best Evidence Topics) format (CATBank even has software to help you along) or use our own Journal Club template.

Please, though, make your post readable and engaging. Sites like this squander a lot of their value — their posts would be far more useful if the key findings were boldfaced, the stats were arranged nicely, and the whole thing was easy on the eyes. Both our site and the U of M site are something you can use as reference, but I want ours to be something that invites leisurely reading and commenting.

Sometimes, maybe you just want to call everyone’s attention to a new important paper, but you don’t have time to rigorously appraise it, because your shift starts in ten minutes. It’s understandable. Just login and post the article name, volume, page etc (I can upload the pdf later) and your brief impressions. Hopefully, others in the residency will share your enthusiasm for this topic, and offer up their own analysis and appraisal, in the comments section.

Funny papers: I love these (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, here are some examples). And I certainly don’t want this site to become dry and boring. But the purpose of the site is to discuss relevant journal articles and create a useful, searchable database. If humorous links start clogging up the search tags, we might have to remove them.

Interface with the Conference Journal Club: We’ll post the pdf of the monthly journal club article to this site. Plus, we’ll post some talking points after your presentation, along with some highlights that emerged in the discussion. We’ll see how things unfold…