Teaching critical appraisal during critical care fellowship training: A foundation for evidence-based critical cave medicine

Objective: To determine whether fellowship training in critical care medici ne with critical appraisal exercises improves the ability and confidence of fellows to evaluate the medical literature. Design: Prospective, interventional pilot study. Setting: Multidisciplinary critical care medicine training program at a lar ge university hospital. Intervention: Fellows were given three didactic sessions covering study des ign, analysis, and critical appraisal techniques. During the course of the year, each fellow was required to review one article from the literature an d present a critique of this article to the group and faculty (Journal Club ). Fellows were guided in the preparation of this presentation by one of th e critical care medicine faculty. Finally, a written analysis and critique of the article was performed by each fellow. Measurements and Main Results: A test was given to each fellow at the begin ning and end of the academic year. This test consisted of two pairs of arti cles on therapy for acute lung injury. For the pretest, each fellow was ass igned, at random, one pair of articles. Fellows were given 1 hr to review b oth articles and to fill out a six-point test to assess their ability and c onfidence to appraise each article. At the end of the year, each fellow was tested on the opposite pair, the tests were graded in a blinded fashion an d the results of each test were compared. Six fellows completed both pre- a nd posttests. These paired results were analyzed separately, whereas result s for another six fellows were conducted as an unpaired analysis. Mean scor es increased both for the paired analysis (4.1 +/- 0.7 vs. 5.1 +/- 0.5; p = .015) and for the unpaired analysis (4.3 +/- 0.6 vs. 5.0 +/- 0.5; p = .012 ). Self-reported confidence in critical appraisal also increased (2.5 +/- 0 .5 vs. 3.9 +/- 0.7; p = .004 and 2.6 +/- 0.5 vs. 3.9 +/- 0.6; p < .001, res pectively). Conclusion: Critical appraisal exercises used in the training of critical c are medicine fellows appear to improve both ability and confidence to appra ise relevant medical literature.