Learn how to critically appraise published medical research literature to keep up with research developments in your field. In today’s clinical professions, staff are expected to keep up with fast-changing, evidence-based research in their own field and beyond. On this course, you will learn critical appraisal techniques to evaluate the quality of healthcare research literature.

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You will evaluate published papers, interrogate their methodologies, identify strengths and weaknesses and produce a balanced appraisal of papers to discuss with colleagues, patients, and academic bodies. You’ll assess the contributions of published papers to their research fields, and identify where there’s a need for further research.

What topics will you cover?

- Principles of critical appraisal

- Techniques and models for critiquing healthcare research papers

- Relevant research designs and analysis methods, both quantitative and qualitative

- Papers discussed and appraised will cover a broad range of health areas

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

- Identify an appropriate framework with which to appraise a published paper

- Evaluate the design, methods, analyses and conclusions of published papers

- Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of published papers to produce a balanced critical appraisal

- Assess the contributions made by published papers to the current state of knowledge in that field

- Identify recommendations for further research resulting from an analysis of published work in a specialist field

Who is the course for?

This course is designed for healthcare professionals including medics, dentists, nurses, midwives, paramedics, radiologists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists and pharmacists.

It will be relevant to any stage of a career. Established professionals may look to complete the course as evidence of CPD, and the skills will also be highly relevant to junior staff, trainees, and undergraduate/postgraduate students.

This course will also be useful for healthcare educational researchers and any other learners who:

-Need to critically appraise and stay abreast of the healthcare research literature as part of their clinical duties

-Are considering carrying out research & developing their own research projects.

-Are undertaking or plan to join a formal pre-doctoral integrated academic training programme.