Paediatric Journal Club with Prof Stone

Thanks to everyone who came along to our final workshop session of the year. Dr Quinn gave a fantastic talk and we hope it was of interest to everyone there. That was the last workshop session of the academic year, if anyone has any comments about any of the workshop sessions or would like to get involved in organising future sessions please get in touch at gems.student@googlemail.com. We would appreciate any feedback you might have so we can improve for next year.

However this is not the end of GEMS for the year, as we still have a few events lined up in the coming months. Our next Journal Club will take place on Wednesday, 14th March from 6.30 pm – 8 pm in Seminar Room 2 of the medical school.
Prof David Stone, an eminent paediatric epidemiologist, will be discussing the following paper with us:

Florence, Curtis et al. Effectiveness of anonymised information sharing and use in health service, police, and local government partnership for preventing violence related injury: experimental study and time series analysis. BMJ 2011;342-available here. You can also e-mail GEMS and get sent a copy if you have any problems.

Prof Stone will use this paper to illustrate and discuss the use of population surveillance and data registries. Please note that, as always, hard copies of the paper will not be available on the night, so please print off your own copy.

Any questions again feel free to contact us on gems.student@googlemail.com

See you then

GEMS

Workshop Session 5-The Statistics Strike Back!

Last Thursday’s session on the basics of statistics was a great success-thanks to our speaker Jacob from the GEMS committee who did a fantastic job of presenting and explaining what is a very difficult topic!

We continue our statistics session this coming Thursday with a focus on clinical statistics. In this session we will be discussing the clinical applications of statistics which are commonly seen, some aspects of which you may already be familiar with. Sensitivity, specificity, survival graphs and regression models will all be covered. Once again this should be an excellent introduction for newcomers to the topic, as well as excellent revision for Intercalers, and there will be an opportunity to ask any questions. The session will be held on Thursday 9th February, 6:30, Seminar Room 2 Wolfson Medical School.

Another date for everyone, our next Journal Club will be held on Wednesday 15th February. Dr Ed Newman, neurologist at the Southern General will be our speaker this time. Details of the paper to follow.

Any questions on these or any other aspects of GEMS feel free to e-mail us on the usual address, gems.student@googlemail.com

GEMS

Happy New Year!

Welcome back to the new academic year! We hope everyone had a relaxing and enjoyable holiday! Unfortunately its back to the grind now….

GEMS has got several session lined up for the upcoming months. Firstly, on Wednesday 18th Janruary at 6:30 in Seminar Room 2 we present our latest journal club. This session Colin Geddes, Renal physician from the Western Infirmary will be discussing Comparison of Mortality in all Patients on dialysis, Patients on Dialysis Awaiting Transplantation, and Recipients of a First Cadaveric Transplant by Wolfe et al. The paper can be found here. In particular, Dr Geddes will be focusing on the  issues, biases and pitfalls associated with having only observational study data. The session promises to be interesting and informative, and we hope to see you all there.

Also to remind you all that the next GEMS workshop sessions on Statistics will be held at the end of the month (date TBC). These session have proved quite popular in the past, as we take the complex topic of medical statistics and summarise it into 2 lectures. In this we aim to teach you what you need to know for understanding the statistics of papers. These session will prove invaluable for all students wanting to understand a bit more the papers they are reading. Stay tuned for more details!

Enjoy the first week back at term!
GEMS

GEMS is Back!

Welcome!

The Glasgow Evidence Based Medicine Society is back for the academic year! We have been busy organising numerous Workshop Sessions and Journal Club meetings in order to help teach the skills required to further your understanding of Evidence Based Practise. Our first Workshop Session will be held on Thursday 6th October in Boyd Orr Building Lecture Theatre D (5th Floor) at 6:30. Our first session will be on How to Read a Paper, and will be a gentle introduction into how to read and analyse an academic paper. This session will be of particular use for those in second year who have the critical appraisal, but also for those who feel bamboozled by journals and want to improve their skills.

We also have details for our first Journal Club Session. Professor Matthew Walters, a highly respected medical academic an the Western Infirmary, with an interest in stroke treatment and evaluation, will be leading the session on 19th October-Time and Venue TBC. Professor Walters is an enthusiastic and professional speaker, and promises to be both entertaining and educational. This session will be a great way to put the skills learned in our workshop session to use, and gain advice from a senior academic on how to critically appraise a paper!

Details on future workshop sessions and journal clubs can be found on our Calendar page. For information about these sessions or any other queries, feel free to e-mail us on  gems.student@googlemail.com

Further information on our first annual conference-Is Academic Medicine for Me?-can be found on our Conference page. The abstract submission deadline has passed, and applicants will be informed of the outcome on the 15th October. However, there may still be an opportunity to attend the conference. E-mail above for more information!

GEMS