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

There will be four submission periods in 2025 and each will be open for one month each. The periods are January 2025, February 2025, March 2025, April 2025.

Submit your abstract for January 2025 now.

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Submission Criteria

Applicant Criteria

• The review should be solely the Trainee’s own work. Reviews will be assessed for plagiarism by reviewers.
• Entrants may submit more than one entry at a time. Group submissions are not permitted.
• Reviews should be fully anonymised. Reviews which are not anonymised will be excluded.
• Eligible Applicants: Trainees from an Internal Medicine programme , registered on a Basic Specialist Training Programme (BST), Higher Specialist Training Programme (HST), International Residency Training Programme (IRT) or the International Clinical Fellowship Programme (ICF) 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.
• To be considered for the Kate McGarry Prize you will need to present your winning article in person at the annual National Education Day for Doctors in Training, which will take place on 23 of May 2025.

Journal selection criteria:

• The chosen article for journal club should be relevant to General Internal Medicine, targeted at the Basic Specialist Training stage, and not overly subspecialised. 
• The paper reviewed must have been published within one year of the competition’s commencement e.g. for the 2024/25 competition, the article must be published after 1 January 2024.  
• Your review of the selected journal article should conform to the guidelines below.

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Guidelines & Scoring Criteria

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.

1. The review should not exceed 500 words in length. 10% of the awarded marks are deducted for submissions over the word limit by >10%.
2. Provide a clear description of the study design (Max 10 marks).
3. Appraise the study’s validity (Max 30 marks)
4. Asses the reliability of the study ‘s results (Max 30 marks)
5. Discuss the relevance of the paper to clinical practice (Max 30 marks)

Please click here for the full submission guidelines and breakdown of the marking scheme.

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