We love learning and sharing what we learn. In this post, we will discuss Bubble Wraps, one of the many ways to get further involved in the Don’t Forget The Bubbles (DFTB) community.
What is a Bubble Wrap?
The DFTB team releases Bubble Wraps each month. They are a roundup of interesting and useful articles that our Bubble Wrappers have found during the month.
The round-up consists of short write-ups that communicate the article’s key points to help us all interpret the results practically and pragmatically. These articles may include original research, guidelines, reviews, or interesting commentary. Sometimes, articles from the past may come up during a real-life clinical case!
We mainly focus on Pediatric Emergency Medicine (PEM), but we also welcome Bubble Wraps covering General Paediatrics or PICU topics. Bubble Wrap is led by DFTB Executive Dr Vicki Currie, who reviews all articles.Â
Why do we Bubble Wrap?
We Bubble Wrap so that we can share our learning and make it more accessible and applicable to our daily practice. It is all about knowledge translation, whereby we want to make meaning from the information that we read and communicate this in a way that is effective and easily understandable.
Although excellent (or maybe not!), most journal articles take time and brain power to read. Bubble Wraps aims to simplify and summarise this information. This allows readers to grasp key concepts quickly and provides a scaffold for keen readers who want to go away and read in more depth. Additionally, being up-to-date with the month’s most recent and exciting articles is a great way to bring out your inner genius when speaking to colleagues in the Emergency Department or on the wards.
The other reason we Bubble Wrap is to continue to build our community of practice. We know one of the best ways to learn is from our peers and near-peers. However, in the case of DFTB, the definition of near-peers is somewhat loose, with our readers and writers coming from all different countries worldwide. Our Bubble Wrappers have a huge range of experience, we offer individual Bubble Wraps (where you submit these directly), and team-based Bubble Wraps, with the QMUL PEM MSc take-over being an example of this. Recently, we published an international Bubble Wrap, with more planned and we are keen to keep Bubble Wrap spreading across the globe.
It’s also important not to forget what you can get from being a Bubble Wrapper. We acknowledge all of your contributions, and by writing for us, you can better your understanding, critical appraisal abilities, and skills with knowledge translation. Most importantly, you can join us in showing your love of learning.
How to Bubble Wrap?
Since Bubble Wraps are all about readability, we tend to like them in a structured, concise style, approximately 200-250 words. This involves communicating them in a simple, conversational, and understandable way. Although challenging, this writing style is a skill set that DFTB and our readers value highly. The best way to check this is to practice reading the submission out loud, which may feel odd to start with!
The structure we ask for is:
- Topic – Title – Reference
- What’s it about?
- Why does it matter?Â
- And a clinically relevant bottom line.
Even more challenging is that within these 200 words, we want you to appraise the article critically. If it is excellent, let us know why. Equally, if it is misguided, has significant limitations or oddly framed, then we totally back you to say so. We also want you to consider how the articles might change your practice or thinking.
We are delighted to have your one-off, occasional, or even regular contributions.
Next steps
If you are interested, then please get in touch!
At the end of each monthly Bubble Wrap, you will find contact details for whom to email and how to share your ideas. Contact Dr Vicki Currie: vickijanecurrie@gmail.com
We recommend contacting early because there is sometimes a risk of duplication. Equally, some bigger articles are covered by (or due to be covered by) DFTB as featured blog posts, so please check with Vicki or use the search engine to look at previous posts on DFTB. Who knows, your initial Bubble Wrap idea may lead you to your first DFTB blog!
We look forward to hearing from you!
