History of Journal Club at Mayo Clinic

The concept of Journal Club has a lengthy history at Mayo Clinic. While Dr. William Osler is credited with gathering transdisciplinary clinicians on a regular basis to review one another’s new journal articles while at McGill University in the 1870s and then later at Johns Hopkins University, Dr. William J. Mayo began regular visits to Baltimore in 1894 and fostered a close friendship with Dr. Osler. Subsequently, Drs. Joe Mayo, Eli Christiensen, and John Berkman formed a group they called “Journal Club” in 1928 during which they “could meet at noon during the winter months, have luncheon, and discuss various medical subjects”. 

Several years later Dr. Arlie Barnes referred to the Journal Club as “Joe’s special educational class”.  Other clinicians soon joined including Sam Haines, Arlie Barnes, Herman Moersch, Ivan Lillie, Harry Parker, Harry Fortin, and John Camp and they would meet regularly on Thursday at noon at the University Club.  They initially capped membership at twelve due to space limitations and to ensure time for every attendee to participate.

As the youngest specialty in the House of Medicine, emergency medicine has evolved within the concept of Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) first envisioned by Dr. David Sackett in 1992.  The Mayo Clinic Department of Emergency Medicine leverages the User’s Guide to the Medical Literature to facilitate a transparent approach to deriving clinically relevant and answerable questions using the Patient-Intervention-Control-Outcome (PICO) format, a reproducible search strategy using common electronic databases like PubMed and Translating Research into Practice (TRIP), and structured critical appraisal of the highest quality published research for each PICO question.  Since emergency medicine does not occur in a vacuum, the EBM approach also relies upon other specialties to participate in the analysis of published research and an open discussion about the facilitators or barriers to adapting the diagnostic, prognostic, or therapeutic status quo based upon new research.  Mayo then archives the PICO question, critical appraisals, and synthesis of each month’s Journal Club as a resource for Implementation Science and a Learning Health System for future learners.