114: STRATEGIES FOR HOLDING SUCCESSFUL EVIDENCE-BASED JOURNAL CLUBS IN THE HEALTH MANAGEMENT AND MEDICAL INFORMATICS FACULTY OF KERMAN UNIVERSITY OF MEDICAL SCIENCES

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Journal Club is a well-known method for reviewing new scientific articles and evidence-based information; in different fields of medical sciences. METHODS: This qualitative content analysis study was done by interviewing nine academics and graduate students at the Department of Librarianship at the Faculty of Health Management and Medical Informatics of Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Kerman, Iran in 2015. Data collection was continued until saturation. RESULTS: Several strategies for holding better journal clubs were extracted from the interviews. The main themes extracted were that; journal clubs should be held at an appropriate time, have someone in charge of organizing the facilities and content; and let everyone participate in the discussion. Also article appraisal should be taught to participants beforehand. Some of the obstacvles of a good journal club were the lack of sufficient proficiency in English and lack of proper understanding of the subject under discussion. CONCLUSION: Although in many great universities around the world evidence-based journal clubs are routinely and correctly held; this task has not yet been maturely performed in many educational centers in Iran. More efforts should be put into holding routine and appropriate journal clubs.