Jacob Schor, ND
For anyone who’s been doing this doctoring business for any length of time, it is obvious that what you thought you knew when you started often gets revised, updated, or plain proven wrong. In other words, there is an ongoing struggle to keep up with what you think you know. On top of that, is that many of the things we never understood, that were at one time mysteries to medicine, have a habit of getting figured out, or at least theories get proposed, tested, and sometimes achieve tentative acceptance so in the end we seem to know a lot more about a lot of things than we used to.
I suppose while we were in school, those teaching us were responsible, to some extent, to provide the latest and most current knowledge in class so that upon graduation and as we began to practice, we were current with the state of things. It certainly didn’t take long though for information to start slipping out of date and become yesterday’s science. This situation can become a challenge for the conscientious practitioner who wants to provide the best care to their patients.
I’ve met doctors over the years who view the information they received during medical school as definitive, as some sort of unchanging Gospel that will suffice to inform them for the entirety of their careers. Then there are those who were so overwhelmed by the amount of information they were supposed to assimilate during their training that they simply gave up even then on absorbing it all and instead latched onto one or two basic ideas that appealed to them and have based their entire practices on extolling those tenets ever since. We have all met colleagues who put every patient who walks in the door on the same protocol.
For those of us who comprehend that knowledge is not static and that people are not all the same but bring to us a diverse collection of needs, there is an ethical and moral obligation to keep up, and when possible, even expand our understanding of medicine. How can we keep up though?
Over the years I’ve subscribed to the offerings of various colleagues who have published research summaries and updates. I’m thinking all the way back to Steve Austen’s Quarterly Review of Natural Medicine and then to HealthNotes. And Paul Bergner’s thing, the Medical Herbalist, and others. These were all back in the print era and the US Postal Service’s Bulk Mailing Permits. Each arrived, was read, and filed into a looseleaf binder. None of these enterprises lasted more than a few years that I recall. I suppose there were never enough subscribers to pay production costs.
My current go-to favorite source of literature reviews are provided by Joshua Goldenberg, ND, through his Dr. Journal Club. He’s been doing this for ten years and has no intention of stopping.
Dr. Goldenberg started this little project when doing the five-year track in naturopathic school that allowed for a side-major in research. He had studied molecular biology and genetics at the University of Pennsylvania while an undergraduate and had assumed he would go into research. And then, like so many of us, he had one of those detours in life that sidetracked us toward the study of alternative medicine, in particular naturopathic medicine. He ended up training at Bastyr University. One of the things he missed though, there, were the journal clubs he had attended as an undergraduate: those once-a-week meetings that kept students current with the science and helped them hone their skills in reading journal articles. Wanting to be up to date on the current research on matters relevant to naturopathic medicine, Joshua started his own version of a naturopathic journal club while a student at Bastyr. He claims to have forgotten what they called it.
Upon graduation he missed the process of finding and reading current studies and so had a notion to build a platform online that allowed him to continue doing so. That led to the creation of his first website in 2013, teaching himself how to build a website and learning to add material without the thing crashing. He started by posting information on how to read journal articles and reviewing basic studies. Dr. Goldenberg said that, “Bastyr University took a big chance on me,” and gave him $300 so their library could access the material he was creating and posting.
It’s grown since then. Ten years later, multiple employees and hundreds and hundreds of videos are posted online. Every month a new article is reviewed and summarized in depth. There’s always an in-depth analysis of a study relevant to our practices along with the option of what Goldenberg calls a ‘super speedy version’ that delivers the bottom line in a snapshot form. People like me complained so much about not liking to watch videos that the Journal Club has added transcripts and then boiled the information down to single PowerPoint summary slides that Josh thinks can be swallowed in ten seconds or so. (They take longer, but they certainly are fast and easy to comprehend). At this point there are hundreds and hundreds of articles reviewed. I know I’ve already said that, but some things are worth repeating.
Dr. Goldberger taught critical evaluation of evidence at Bastyr post-graduation and at Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine (AIHM) Fellowship for the post docs studying integrative medicine.
In addition to reviews of relevant studies. there is a bunch of content posted on the Journal Club’s website to help develop the skills one needs to evaluate evidence used by studies particularly those on integrative medicine. Over time longer courses were developed for CE credit that range from one to five hours. They are now releasing a full course every three months. Goldenberg’s group now has approval from the North American Naturopathic Continuing Education Accreditation Council (NANCEAC) to award CE credits for their programs.
Several universities offer ongoing sponsorship allowing their students access to the website including Palmer Chiropractic, Bastyr, and Boucher.
Several naturopathic specialty groups offer their membership to the Journal Club, including the Oncology Association of Naturopathic Physicians (OncANP) and the Gastroenterology Association of Naturopathic Physicians (GastroANP). Dr. Goldenberg seems eager to share his passion and excitement for reading research and seems to offer rather generous trial memberships to his website in the hope of hooking practitioners who find the service valuable.
This little ‘pet project’ of Dr. Goldenberg’s has turned into a passion, and it’s obvious that he takes great pleasure in sharing his knowledge. We might hope his passion is contagious, and we see a spread of interest in evidence-based decision making in the integrative medical fields. We have not been immune to the spread of false and inaccurate medical beliefs in recent years. Learning to read and evaluate scientific literature has become something like an exercise in public health, like providing basic services such as clean water.
Dr. Goldenberg is clearly having fun doing this, so let’s hope he never stops.
Published September 23, 2023
About the Author
Jacob Schor, ND, now retired, had a general practice with a focus on naturopathic oncology in Denver, Colorado. He served as Abstract & Commentary Editor for the Natural Medicine Journal for several years (https://www.naturalmedicinejournal.com/) and posts blog articles on natural therapies, nutrition, and cancer (https://drjacobschor.wordpress.com/). He was a board member of CoAND and past president of OncANP, and is someone who is happier outdoors than inside.