BJD support for dermatology journal clubs: nurturing Sir William Osler's legacy

By the time you have finished reading this editorial, several new medical articles will have been published disproving facts that we learnt at medical school and until now took for granted. Lifelong learning sounds like a no-brainer, but how do we achieve this in practice? Medical journals offer the most up-to-date information, yet with the dozens of dermatology journals in existence and numerous dermatology articles in general medical publications, it is impossible for individual clinicians to keep up to date with the literature. Journal clubs provide a forum for clinicians to learn about the newest developments in their field and manage the constant barrage of new information published in medical journals. Careful selection of articles, succinct presentation of the article’s core messages and subsequent discussions, including a critical appraisal of evidence quality, facilitate understanding and allow an assessment of the relevance and quality of the new knowledge. Yet the concept of a journal club is not a new one. Medical journal clubs have existed for almost 150 years, with the earliest description found in the biography of Sir James Paget (from 1835 to 1854) of a group of students from St Bartholomew’s Hospital, who met in ‘a small room over a baker’s shop near the Hospital-gate where we could sit and read the journals and where some, in the evening, played cards’. However, it is Sir William Osler at McGill University in Montreal in 1875 who is most frequently credited as the founder.