Glasgow Evidence-based Medicine Society GEMS

May the Evidence Base Be With You

GEMS — Tue, 01 May 2012 22:58:44 +0000

Our GEMS sessions have come to an end for another academic year. All the sessions have been a great success and we hope everyone that attended our sessions enjoyed them and got something from attending. We will be returning with more sessions next academic year, but until then there are a few more important events to share with you.

GEMS will be holding its AGM on Thursday, 10^th May from 6.30 pm – 7.30 pm at the Boyd Orr Lecture Theatre C (507) to discuss how to take GEMS with its various activities into the new academic year and to appoint new committee members.

As you know, GEMS has been involved in a number of projects this year which included:

· monthly journal club sessions facilitated by speakers from a wide range of specialities and research interests

· monthly workshop sessions on research skills

· organisation of our first academic conference at RCPSG which attracted over 100 delegates from the UK and beyond – plans for the second one in October 2012 are under way

· research project mentor linking

and all of which require dedicated new people on the committee to take them further next year.

We are looking for new blood to join the committee and GEMS as a whole, and are hoping that many of you who are interested in research and/or academia will come along, bring fresh ideas and participate. And, it is a great way of boosting your CV too!

Thanks again for all your support, and we hope to see you then!

GEMS

Paediatric Journal Club with Prof Stone

GEMS — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 23:17:46 +0000

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 6-Return of the Poster

GEMS — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 18:28:32 +0000

We finish up our workshop session for the academic year with a talk from Dr Terry Quinn on Poster Making Skills. Dr Quinn is a geriatric academic based at the Royal Infirmary who has had a lot of involvement with GEMS in the past. He spoke at our recent conference on Abstract Writing and Poster Presentation, and will now bring this topic to our workshop. Posters are an easy and fun way to present research, attend conference and above all boost your CV. This session will cover what makes a good poster and how to go about making one of conference standard.

The session will be split. We will initially have a short talk from Dr Quinn about designing posters, and then spend some time critiquing example posters. This will be a good opportunity to see and learn from posters which have been accepted at conference level. The session will be of benefit to everyone wanting to present some work in the future, and we hope may be of some benefit to Intercalting students before their big hand in!

The session will be held on Tuesday 6th March at 6:30 in Seminar Room 1, Wolfson Medical School.

Other dates for your diary:

-Wednesday 14th March-Paediatric Journal Club, Dr David Stone a paediatric epidemiologist will host this journal club. Details to follow

-Thursday 5th April-Academic Foundation Program Evening, GEMS in conjunction with the AFP will be holding an information evening on the application process and what is involved with AFP. This will include talks from students who have just applied to the AFP as well as current academic FY1′s. This evening should hopefully be of benefit to those considering applying.

Any questions on the above feel free to contact us on the usual address gems.student@googlemail.com

GEMS

GEMS Journal Club 4-Neurology with Dr Ed Newman

GEMS — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 13:52:36 +0000

Hopefully, people didn’t find out last session on clinical statistics too daunting. Many thanks to Daniel on the committee for providing an informative and understandable lecture. Those statistics sections of papers should be all the more clearer now!

Our next session is another Journal Club, this time hosted by Dr Ed Newman of the Southern General Hospital. Dr Newman is a respected Neurologist who is known for giving engaging lectures to students. He will be discussing Ascorbic acid in Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease type 1A (CMT-TRIAAL and CMT-TRAUK): a double-blind randomised trial by Paryeson et al. The paper can be accessed here.

The session will run on Wednesday 15th February, 6:30 in Seminar Room 2, Wolfson Medical School. The paper can be found at the above link, or if you contact us on gems.student@googlemail.com we can send a copy on to you. Hope to see everyone there!

GEMS

Workshop Session 5-The Statistics Strike Back!

GEMS — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:52:15 +0000

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

Workshop Session 4-A New Hope for Statistics!

GEMS — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:04:43 +0000

Statistics is a topic which scares medical students and consultants alike! However, statistics are a a central component of research and in presenting results, and understanding the basics of statistics is essential for appreciating clinical trials. Our next 2 workshop session will go through some of the basics of statistics, and will hopefully make this complex topic much simpler.

At GEMS we know that statistics is a complex topic, but we will be teaching the basics that you will require to understand the analysis that is commonly seen in journal papers. We will be running 2 sessions:

Session 1-Basic statistics, including confidence intervals and p-values, concepts seen in virtually every journal paper Thursday 2nd Feb, Seminar Room 2 Wolfson Medical School, 6:30

Session 2-Clinical statistics, including sensitivity, specificity and survival analysis, common features of randomised controlled trials, and an examiners favourite! Thursday 9th Feb, Seminar Room 2 Wolfson Medical School, 6:30

These session will be run by members of the GEMS committee who have studied statistics. Committe members will also be around if anyone has any questions, especially Intercalers who may have statistics queries before their exam!

Any questions feel free to e-mail us on gems.student@googlemail.com

Hopefully see you there

GEMS

Happy New Year!

GEMS — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 19:08:50 +0000

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 Journal Club 3-Epidemiology with Dr Michelle Gillies

GEMS — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 12:24:32 +0000

GEMS presents its next Journal Club session, Epidemiology on Wednesday 7th December, 6.30-8pm, Seminar Room 2, Wolfson Medical School.

Dr Michelle Gillies will be discussing the following paper with us:
Leon DA. McCambridge J. Liver cirrhosis mortality rates in Britain from 1950 to 2002: an analysis of routine data. Lancet 2006; 367:52-56. Paper available here

Dr Gillies is an expert in the area of epidemiology and she will talk to us about the unique aspects of research in this area, which is often unfamiliar to undergraduates. This month’s journal club is exclusively for undergraduates so a relaxed, friendly environment in which to practise your skills of critical appraisal Please note that hard copies of the paper will not be available on the night; please print it off in advance. Hope to see you on Wed!

This will be our last GEMS session of the year, so from all of us at GEMS we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Hope you all have a good break and we will see you all next term!

GEMS

GEMS Conference a Success!

GEMS — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 23:11:17 +0000

The first annual GEMS conference was held this weekend, and the day was a fantastic success! We would like to thank all delegates for attending and making the day hospital. All oral presenters were both professional and interesting, and similarly the posters present were of an exceptionally high standard! Also, congratulations to the oral and poster winners, they were all well deserved.

A big thank you to all of our invited speakers, who took time out of their busy Saturdays to come and speak for us. I think we would all agree that their presentations were thoroughly entertaining and informative!

We hope you all had a great time at the conference, till next year!

GEMS

Workshop Session 3-Revenge of the Literature Search!

GEMS — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 23:05:18 +0000

Our previous GEMS workshop session have taught how to read papers, now we are teaching how to find papers with our literature searching session. Searching databases for medical journals is one of the best ways to keep up to date in medicine. With so much research being published, it is important to understand how to efficiently search databases to find specifically what you are looking for. Finding up to date journals and using them in coursework is a simple way of improving your work-something the third years with the upcoming LCP hand in might want to think about!

The session will be led by Catroina Denoon, librarian at Gartnavel Library, who has kindle offered her time to give the session. It will be held in Seminar Room 2 in the Wolfson Medical School at 6:30 on Thursday 24th November. We are also delighted to offer FREE CAKE for all attendees, since this will be our last session before the Christmas break. Any queries at all, feel free to e-mail on gems.student@googlemail.com

GEMS