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Critical appraisal skills are an essential part of the practice of evidence-based healthcare. Any literature read, should be read critically. That means forming your own views and opinions upon it, however many people lack confidence in this area. This course complements 'Critical Reading Made Easy: Introduction to Research Methodologies & Statistics', though they do not need to be done together. However this session assumes that attendees have either attended our introductory session, or at least have a working knowledge of critical appraisal principles.

In this two hour session we, quite simply, read and discuss two papers, putting into practice the principles of critical appraisal.

This session consists of reading two articles and having a group discussion about them and their methodologies. We appraise two of the following: an observational study (cohort or case control), a systematic review and a randomised controlled trial. We use some check lists to help us with some of the papers. The papers we choose are never too techical nor do they require specialist knowledge. Every time we run this session we use different papers so you can come back as many times as you wish.

Teaching materials
All the articles and checklists are provided, so you do not need to print anything, except a pen!

Impact
This course, along the the 'Introduction' session, have been shown by past attendees to nearly double their confidence levels when it comes to critical appraisal skills. See more detail on the impact it makes by looking at #uhllibCRME on Twitter.

Alternative format
We can bring this session to you! If you would like us to come to your team or educational meeting (to look at one or more papers) or help you with your journal club, just let us know.