ABILITY OF PEDIATRIC RESIDENTS TO READ CR ITICALLY CLINICAL RESEARCH PAPERS

Objective. To explore ability to read clinical research papers by pedi atric residents at different stages of their training. Setting. Four h ospitals of the Mexican Social Security System located in Mexico City. Material and methods. An instrument to evaluate the ability to read c ritically pediatric research papers was developed and validated by fou r experts. It contained four abstracts generated from research article s and was integrated by 30 interpretation items, 30 judgment items and 30 alternative proposals items, to be answered by the true-false-don' t know system. Results. Sixty seven residents participated (21 first y ear, 20 second year and 26 third year level). There were no significan t differences in interpretation, judgment and overall scores between g roups. There was a significant degree of agreement in the ordinality o f the residents for the scores in interpretation, judgment and proposa ls (Kendall W = 0.55, p < 0.001). Conclusions. We conclude that the re sidents were not influenced by the training received during their resi dence in regard to their ability for critical reading of clinical rese arch papers.