Teaching critical reading to medical residents

Objetive. To compare an educational strategy for promoting the participation versus the traditional teaching of research in medical residents. Material and methods. We generated a questionnaire validated by experts: to evaluate the critical reading of clinical epidemiology reports. It contains 75 items which explore interpretation judgements or proposals of modification to the reports. A total of 68 first year residents were included in three groups who were exposed for 27-28 hours in periodic sessions to training: group I was exposed to a critical reading strategy with active discussion promoted by a professor. Groups II and III had a traditional training with lectures using the same information in all groups. Results. There were no group differences in their critical reading previous to receiving the training. Groups I and II increased their global medians basically in the interpretation skills. When the results were adjusted eliminate the chance-expected changes, only group I improved its critical reading. Conclusion. The strategy promoting student participation appeared to be superior to the traditional strategy in the training of our medical residents.