[Developing critical skills to analyze research reports in nuclear medicine]

To estimate the impact of an educational strategy aimed at developing critical reading of research reports among medical residents enrolled in a nuclear medicine course.

We carried out an intervention study to measure the degree to which students developed critical reading skills in a one month period (May-June, 2007). We developed an instrument that included five summaries of research articles in nuclear medicine and 96 sentences that measured four indicators (interpret, judge, propose, and assessment of technical and technological aspects). The instrument's internal validity was measured using the Kuder-Richardson test (KR 20 = 0.89) stratified in five scores: very low (17-32), low (33-48), medium (49-64), high (65-80) and very high (81-96). Non-paramentric statistics was employed to determine significant differences.

At the beginning of the intervention, 0.80 of participating residents scored in the "very low" domain of critical reading even after controlling for a random effect. At the end of the study, 0.90 scored in the "medium" category. Results were statistically significant (p = 0.02).

The educational strategy tested, fostered the development of critical reading skills among a sample of nuclear medicine residents.