Literature Digest Creation Method

Here is how I create each week’s critical care literature digest:

First, I find all of the articles published each week in the following journals using the RSS feeds of the journals:

1. CHEST
2. Critical Care Medicine (current issue)
3. Critical Care Medicine (published ahead of print)
4. JAMA (Critical Care only)
5. NEJM (Critical Care only)
6. Pharmacotherapy
7. FDA Press releases
8. Critical Care (the open access journal)
9. Lancet Respiratory Infections
10. Lancet Respiratory Medicine
11. Lancet Antiinfective Therapy
12. Lancet Healthcare Infections
13. Lancet Neurological Infections
14. Annals of Emergency Medicine
15. Clinical Infectious Diseases (current issue)
16. Clinical Infectious Diseases (published ahead of print)
17. ASHP (current issue)
18. ASHP (published ahead of print)
19. Anesthesia & Analgesia (current issue)
20. Anesthesia & Analgesia (published ahead of print)
21. Anesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine
22. Journal of Intensive Care Medicine (current issue)
23. Journal of Intensive Care Medicine (published ahead of print)
24. Intensive Care Medicine (open access)
25. Any other articles or journals that came to my attention that week.

There are usually between 80 and 150 journal articles that come up this way.

Second, I go through and weed out all of the obviously irrelevant articles.  Articles that get cut here are usually correspondence, erratum, book reviews, etc.

Third, I go through the remaining articles and choose the best ones to include in the literature digest.  Articles that get cut here are usually studies done in animals only, and studies that had a non-pharmacologic intervention.

Fourth, I briefly summarize the article and my opinion on how it affects practice, and I record this information as the literature digest.