Keele Research Repository

Being able to critically appraise scientific papers is an important skill. A thorough and methodical approach is necessary, particularly for peer-review purposes. However, it is also important to be able to do this quickly and efficiently. In some circumstances, students and trainees may be asked to perform a review on an unseen paper as part of an assessment. With apologies to my erstwhile teacher, David Sackett, this brief article offers a framework which will allow a fairly complete review of a randomized controlled trial in 15–20 min. This framework requires a reviewer to assess the Validity, Importance, Applicability, GReatness of benefit and Acceptability of any study and is encompassed by the acronym VIAGRA.