Trainee Representation and Opportunities

What is the eJournal Club?

Launched in October 2019, the eJournal Club is a unique opportunity to share your reviews of practice-changing articles with over 1,000 doctors. An initiative of the RCPI Trainees' Committee, the eJournal Club is open to doctors in Internal Medicine who are registered on a Basic Specialist Training (BST) programme, Higher Specialist Training (HST) programme, International Residency Training Programme (IRTP) or the International Clinical Fellowship Programme (ICFP) with the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland.

The eJournal Club welcomes submissions of reviews presented at journal clubs in your hospital. Eligible submissions will be considered for the prestigious Kate McGarry Prize.

Please note: the articles must be relevant to the speciality of General Internal Medicine.

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How to submit an article review for the eJournal Club

Submissions for the eJournal Club are currently closed. Please check back for an update soon.

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Submission Criteria

• The article must have been published within three years prior to the competition’s commencement e.g. for the 2024/25 competition, the article must be published, online or in paper, whichever is the latest, after 1 January 2021.
• The review should be solely the Trainee’s own work. Submissions by groups are not permitted.
• The review should include key learning points for practice and/or a reflection on how it has changed the Trainee’s practice.
• The article should have a general interest, ideally targeted at the Basic Specialist Training stage, and therefore not be overly subspecialised. It will be relevant to the speciality of General Internal Medicine.
• The suitability of articles will be judged by their applicability to medical practice in the first instance.
• Reviews will be assessed for plagiarism by reviewers.
• Reviews should be fully anonymised. Reviews which are not anonymised will be excluded.
• The submissions must conform to the template provided.
• Reviews may only be submitted once and may not be submitted to more than one submission.
• Eligible Applicants: You will receive an email invite if you are from an Internal Medicine programme and you are registered on a Basic Specialist Training (BST) programme, Higher Specialist Training (HST) programme, International Residency Training Programme (IRTP) or the International Clinical Fellowship Programme (ICFP) with the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI) at the time of abstract submission.
• Winning reviews will be considered for the Kate McGarry prize, including a medal and €1,000, which will be presented at the annual National Education Day for Doctors in Training, which will take place on 23 May 2025.
• To be considered for the Kate McGarry Prize you will need to be present at the annual National Education Day for Doctors in Training, which will take place 23 May 2025.

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Judging Process

Submissions will be judged by SpRs in 2nd year Basic Specialist Training (BST) and Higher Specialist Training (HST) on a bi-monthly basis. All entries will be marked using the following marking scheme.

The review should not exceed 400 words in length. Entrants may submit more than one entry at a time. The marking scheme is marked out of 30 marks.

Presentation of the key points in the paper | up to 5 marks

• Concise background information and aim.
• Clear explanation of the study design - patient selection/clinicalcriteria/methods/statistical methods.
• Results delivered in a concise manner/correct interpretation of results based on an understanding of the paper.
• Clear statement that represents the authors’ conclusions.

Discussion of the strengths and limitations of the study | up to 10 marks

• Concept
• Design
• Interpretation of results and conclusion

The Trainee’s interpretation of the study | up to 15 marks

• A reflective paragraph on how this paper has influenced the entrant in terms of the day-to-day practice and experiences.
• Consider the future direction for this work or similar studies. How might it be relevant to other areas of medicine? How does it apply to an Irish healthcare context?

For submissions over the word limit by more than 10%, i.e. >440 words, a deduction of 10% of overall marks.

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