Glasgow Evidence-based Medicine Society 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

Journal Club 2-Obs and Gyn with Dr Hanretty

GEMS — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 20:04:35 +0000

The next journal club session presented by GEMS is here. In this session Dr Kevin Hanretty, Consultant Obstetrician and Gynacologist at the Southern General will be facilitating the session. We will have two members of the GEMS committee, Andrew Degnan and Daniel Kerr presenting two different papers, with discussion facilitated by Dr Hanretty. Dr Hanretty has been well received in past journal clubs, and promises to bring an interesting and interactive session!

The papers that will be reviewed will be:

1. Post traumatic stress disorder chuild abuse history, birthweight and gestational age : a prospective cohort study, Seng et al 2011-found here

2. A meta analysis of adverse perinatal outcome in women with asthma, Murphey et al 2011-found here

The session will be held in Seminar Room 2 in the Wolfson Medical School, on Wednesday 16th November at 6:30. If there are queries feel free to e-mail us at the usual address: gems.student@googlemail.com.

GEMS

Workshop Session 2: Return of the Clinical Trial!

GEMS — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 15:55:59 +0000

GEMS continues it’s teaching on the practise of evidence based medicine with it’s second workshop session of the year-Types of Clinical Trials. Are you confused by what is involved in a randomised controlled trial? Do you get your case controls mixed up with your cohorts, and your systematic reviews from your meta-analyses?

Our session will help ease your confusion! We will go through the different types of clinical trial designs you are likely to encounter when reading journals and reviewing the literature. We will also provide examples of these, and following on from our last session on how to read a paper, will give some points about these designs, both good and bad, which you should be aware of when assessing these papers.

The session will be held on Thursday 3rd November in Seminar Room 2 in the Medical School at 6:30. As always, if you have any questions prior to the session, feel free to e-mail us on gems.student@googlemail.com.

See you then

GEMS

First Journal Club Session of the Year-with Special Guests!

GEMS — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 13:16:25 +0000

Our first workshop session of the year on How to Read a Paper was a fantastic success, and we hope everyone enjoyed it and took something away. To all second years, all the best with the critical appraisal! Any questions or feedback on that session, feel free to contact us. Our next session is going to be our first Journal Club of the year.

The journal club is organised by GEMS and we will be running several sessions throughout the academic year. These are interactive sessions with different specialists who help us hone our critical appraisal skills when reading a variety of research papers using different research methodologies. All our speakers are academic clinicians who bring some insight into the particular paper from their day-to-day practice. These sessions are not only informative and fun but also totally informal so don’t worry if you are not an expert yet…

The journal club also ties in with the workshops GEMS are running again this year where you can learn or brush up on everything from reading a paper, to statistics, to audit planning then you can try out these new skills at the journal club sessions. Reading and critically appraising a paper is not only required for the dreaded second year coursework but is a skill required throughout your student life and beyond, regardless of where you see yourself ending up… so join us and get a headstart!

To kick off the new academic session we’re planning a joint journal club meeting of the West of Scotland Academic Foundation Year trainees and the undergraduate Glasgow Evidence-Based Medicine Society (GEMS).

There will be 5 speakers from the Academic Foundation Year programme and it should serve as a good introduction to journal clubs for those who’ve not been to one before. Discussion will be facilitated by Professor Matthew Walters, a respected academic stroke physician at the Western Infirmary. The papers will be circulated a week or so before the meeting (it is not mandatory to read them prior to the Journal Club but it will be helpful). Please e-mail gems.student@googlemail.com if you plan to attend so that we can send you the papers.

The meeting will be held on Wednesday 19th October from 6-8pm in the Boyd Orr Lecture Theatre A (room 407).

And finally a quick conference update-successful applicants for the conference have all been informed-well done to those who were selected! Applicants should fill out the electronic registration form by Monday 17th October. Further information can be found on our Conference page.

GEMS

GEMS is Back!

GEMS — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 11:57:40 +0000

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