Abstract
Background. Effort to follow the development in various fields of medicine is being hindered by enormous growth of information output.
The vast amount of data makes it difficult to figure out what is really important. Psychiatrists and other physicians tend to read scientific papers superficially, relying excessively on abstracts.
We addressed this problem by teaching critical appraisal of individual articles. Methods.
We developed a 23-item appraisal instrument to assess various aspects of papers on psychopharmacology. The appraisal form was used to evaluate individual articles during a series of workshops with psychiatric trainees.
The results were collected with an electronic voting system and subsequently discussed with experienced tutors who also provided key ratings. Results.
The total of 58 trainees participated at three workshops, six publications were analyzed. Evaluation of the papers yielded heterogeneous results reflecting variations of the participants' theoretical background as well as varied quality of the publications.
We present detailed analysis of one paper as an illustrative example. Conclusions.
Our experience showed that the discussion format and the voting system with immediate feedback stimulate active involvement of the participants. Administration of the structured appraisal instrument that can be easily adapted for other medical publications may enhance understanding and critical appraisal of scientific texts