Journal Watch

I've realized textbooks are no longer the most efficient way for me to learn. Reading a textbook can be low yield because some of it is out of date and other information has already been taught in lectures. During my clerkships, I turned to UpToDate which has the latest peer-reviewed evidence. But over the rotations, it's common to read the same UpToDate articles multiple times. To keep learning new medicine, we are encouraged to read core journals, but that is so hard to do as a trainee; the volume of information is overwhelming, I have not yet winnowed down my area of interest, and the material is pretty dense. So I'd like to put in a plug for Journal Watch, electronic newsletters compiled by the editors of the New England Journal of Medicine. Daily emails update me on key research articles in core journals or important current events such as the status of novel H1N1 "swine" influenza, and weekly emails cover topics from general medicine, hospital medicine, women's health, pediatrics, and a number of subspecialties. Even though I'm not going into those fields, I still find most synopses in Journal Watch to be interesting, educational, relevant, and understandable at my level of knowledge. For topics that seem particularly useful or fascinating, I can always look up the primary source. So I'd encourage those of us who've cast aside textbooks to go beyond UpToDate and subscribe to Journal Watch to get the latest relevant research.