For education and evidence appraisal — not a substitute for clinical judgment.
CertaintyGrade

Journal Club

Evidence debate, not just evidence presentation.

A structured async EBM journal club where half the group defends an intervention and half refutes it — then the group meets to reconcile the evidence together.

📋Create a SessionInstructor / moderator — set the clinical question, invite participants, get the Moderator Packet.
🎓Join a SessionStudent / resident — enter the 6-character code your instructor shared.

How it works

1
Instructor

Pose a clinical question

Enter a specific clinical question. The system converts it to a PICO framework and auto-assigns participants to supporting or refuting positions.

2
Students

Find an article & complete the worksheet

Each participant finds a study from their assigned position, enters the PubMed ID, and completes an Evidence-Based Reasoning Worksheet. AI pre-fills study design, key findings, bias risks, and confounders — the student validates and adds their reasoning.

3
Instructor

Receive the Moderator Packet

Before the session, the instructor receives an AI-generated summary: points of agreement, key tensions between studies, methodological concerns, and suggested discussion questions — without needing to read every paper.

4
Group

Meet and deliberate

The actual discussion happens in person or via Zoom/Teams. Participants bring their worksheets; the moderator guides the group to a final evidence-based answer.

5
Instructor

Record the consensus

After the session, the moderator enters the group's consensus answer and certainty rating. Optionally publish to the Evidence Commons — a growing, searchable database of EBM Q&A built by clinician-educators.

Why the pro/con format?

Assigning half the group to find refuting evidence forces every participant to steelman the opposing view — the most effective critical appraisal skill in clinical practice. Evidence is rarely one-sided, and real patient decisions require holding contradictory studies in tension before reaching a defensible conclusion.

This format also surfaces the exact tensions a good moderator needs to highlight. When an RCT and a cohort study reach opposite conclusions, the group must ask why — and the answer is usually the most important methodological lesson of the session.

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Contributing to the Evidence Commons

After each session, instructors can opt to publish their clinical question and consensus answer to the Evidence Commons — a shared, searchable repository of evidence-based Q&A built by clinician-educators. Every entry carries the studies, GRADE certainty ratings, and group reasoning behind the answer. Not an AI-generated summary — a human-deliberated one.