Journal clubs are an opportunity for health professionals to meet and critically appraise scholarly articles on a topic of common interest. Journal clubs have a range of benefits, including linking research to clinical practice, developing critical appraisal skills, and connecting with other health professionals.
To inform your clinical practice or research, it’s best to look for the highest level of evidence available. A pyramid is often used to represent the hierarchy of evidence, with the higher quality evidence at the top.
If a current, well designed systematic review is not available, go to primary studies to answer your question. The best research designs for a primary study varies depending on the question type. The table below lists optimal study methodologies for the main types of questions.
| Type of question | Explanation | Types of evidence | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Therapy (treatment) | Questions about the effectiveness of interventions in improving outcomes for patients. Includes medications, surgeries, or service delivery | Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) | |
| Prevention | Questions about reducing the chance of disease, identifying risk factors or screening | RCT or Prospective study | |
| Diagnosis | Questions about the validity of diagnostic or screening tests | RCT or Cohort Study or Cross-sectional study | |
| Prognosis | Questions about the likely course of a condition | Cohort Study or Case-Control Series or Longitudinal study | |
| Etiology (causation) | Questions about determining if a harmful factor is related to the development or course of a condition | Cohort Study | |
| Meaning |
|
Qualitative Study |
Critical appraisal is the process of assessing the reliability, trustworthiness and validity of research findings in a particular context. All literature should be critically appraised before being applied to clinical practice.
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Nursing and midwifery research : methods and appraisal for evidence based practice by 
