Learning outcomes from a systematic review workshop series for junior doctors

Systematic reviews provide the highest level of evidence about a topic. Ten-week workshops in conducting systematic reviews were held with hospital doctors in 2019 and 2020.

This study analysed participants' feedback about the systematic review workshops to improve how we teach clinicians about conducting systematic reviews.

Attendees completed a post-workshop survey (with multiple-choice and free-text items) to assess knowledge and skills gained. We compared the responses of senior and junior doctors. We used descriptive statistics for the quantitative data and compared groups using Χ² testing. Qualitative data were analysed using conceptual content analysis.

Of 81 attendees, 52% completed the survey. Of those, 69% had no prior experience with systematic reviews, 93% reported increased knowledge and ability to conduct research and 69% reported increased ability to conduct systematic reviews. More senior than junior clinicians reported gaining knowledge about writing and publishing (37% vs 11%, P = 0.047) and making greater use of skills gained to conduct research (56% vs 23%, P = 0.029). Five themes were identified: learning through course structure; learning through course organisation; teaching style; flexible learning; and suggestions for progression and improvement. Respondents suggested running the workshops during protected teaching time, more time for some sessions, conducting the workshop series more often and making clinicians aware of the workshop series at hospital orientation.

The skills learnt from the systematic review workshop series impacted not only participants' research knowledge and skills, and plans to conduct future research, but also facilitated looking up medical literature in daily clinical work, supporting evidence-based clinical practice.