CAMHS around the Campfire – an Evidence-Based Journal Club
In December 2020, we teamed up with ACAMH to run an online journal club in Child and Adolescent Mental Health (CAMH).
The journal club features live streamed discussion of important new research paper in CAMH. We look at the validity, importance and applicability of the study, and, most importantly, help to bring the service user’s voice into the discussion
The #camhscampfire is free to register via the ACAMH website. The recording and resources are also available via the Mental Elf.
Watch our CAMHSCampfire on support tools for school staff responding to children who self-harm.
The Challenge
Enhancing the impact of online learning has never been more urgent. Passive online learning can be poor quality, with poor retention of knowledge after the event. New evidence is coming out all the time, and health professionals simply lack the time and skills to evaluate technical evidence and put it in context.
For the Association of Child and Adolescent Mental Health, this presents an opportunity. ACAMH publishes a lot of high quality evidence via two peer-reviewed academic journals and their website.
With face-to-face training off the cards for now, how can they present this content in a way that enhances knowledge and develops evidence skills at the same time?
The surge in research on child and adolescent mental health has not always been accompanied by an improvement in critical appraisal skills.
The Solution
ACAMH came to us because of our expertise in critical appraisal and online learning. We opted for an online journal club model.
Journal clubs have been around for over a century, but in recent years they have greatly increased with the rise of evidence-based practice. Briefly, the great appeal of the evidence-based approach is that participants can develop their critical appraisal skills at the same time as answering specific questions that relate to practice.
Our approach brings:
- Working with service users to bring them into the discussion of evidence
- Making sure the content is accessible to all
- Providing resources to support learning at the pace that suits participants
- Facilitating a conversation before, during and after the event that involves researchers, health professionals and service users
- Evaluating the impact immediately after the event, and again a few months later, to assess retention.
We make the best use of technology, but we aren’t slaves to it.
