#17: What are the available online resources?

When dealing with medical writing, either targeting the medical professionals or the lay public, you will need technical support for your writing. When I say technical support, I mean resources or information that you will use for:

· A background research of the topic you are writing (eg, bipolar disorder)
· Finding patient information (eg, for a brochure about heart attack)
· Verifying data or supporting a claim
· Locating a particular clinical paper
· Finding suitable references
· Others

Besides printed publication, such as medical textbooks, journals and dictionaries, the internet is another important source of medical and health sciences information. Depending on what kind of information you are looking for, there a plethora of web sites for you to search from.

PubMed
For most of my work, I use PubMed very frequently to locate references and verify data presented by speakers. The journal database lets you look up journal names, the citation matcher allows you to verify a single or multiple citations.

PubMed is a service of the US National Library of Medicine that includes over 17 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals. Resources included in this database are such as abstracts and full-text publications (for certain journals and after a certain period after publication).

MedlinePlus
MedlinePlus is another service from the US National Library of Medicine. The medical information it provides is more consumer oriented. Here, you can read about 740 health topics and current health news, learn about drugs and supplements, or look up information with their medical encyclopedia and dictionary. This is a suitable online resource when you need to develop a patient-oriented publication.

Others
· eMedicine – provides peer-reviewed articles for healthcare professionals. A good read if you need to get an overall understanding of a particular disease, including it pathophysiology, complications and treatment.
· Medscape – offers free CME articles, medical news, full-text journal articles. You need to sign up as a member to access the articles. Registration is free.

The above mentioned are only a few that I’ve used before. There are still many more out there. If you know of any that is useful, please let me know! :)

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#13: Are there any reference books on medical writing and editing?

You bet there are; in fact quite a number of them. You may need to refer to those books from time to time, so it's worth investing in one or two. Check with your local bookstores, or even order through Amazon.com if they are not available in the bookstores.

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For reference in medical writing, I’m using Medical Writing – A Prescription for Clarity by Neville W Goodman & Martin B Edwards.

This is a very helpful book that helps you write concise and clear medical articles. It discusses about, for example, the choices of words, the correct use of punctuations, and the avoidance of unambiguous sentences, etc.

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I also refer to Rewrite Right by Jan Venolia, a book that provides guidelines on how to improve the quality your writing by using a two-level editing approach.

This book is easy to understand, with loads of examples to illustrate the author’s point.

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Below are other books that you may find interesting and useful. Although they may not necessarily related to medical writing, they certainly provide relevant advice and essential tips on general writing and editing.

For medical and health writers
- Guidebook to Better Medical Writing by Robert L Iles
- Health Writer’s Handbook by Barbara Gastel

For writing in general
- Copyediting: A Practical Guide by Karen Judd
- The Copyeditor’s Handbook by Amy Einsohn

Remember to check them out!

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#11: Still on referencing

Besides journals, information and data can come from a myriad of print and non-print resources, including books or chapter(s) from a book, package inserts, electronic media such as online journals, web sites, e-books and CD-ROMs, and others.

I’m not going to show examples in this post as you can visit the web sites below for extensive examples on referencing. They are all excerpted from the American Medical Association (AMA) Manual of Style, of which appears to be widely accepted by healthcare and medical publishers.

For a very quick guide on common types of references:
AMA Style Guide (at HealthLinks, University of Washington)

For more comprehensive examples:
Quick Reference Citation Format for AMA Manual of Style (from Samford University)

The ultimate guide! Practically covers all basic features of AMA style:
AMA Medstyle Stat (by Dr Abel Scribe)

Check them out!

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#10: What about referencing?

I’ve not mentioned in the last post about citing references in your write-up, but it is definitely an essential part in the manuscript even before you hand it over to your editor for copyediting.

Why referencing?
When a speaker makes a presentation or delivers a lecture, he is basically presenting a compilation of data and information (e.g. results from clinical studies, statistics from a global survey, and others) extracted from various sources. The sources - which include papers published in medical journals, posters presented in international conferences, or statistics reported on website - are almost always quoted at the bottom of their presentation slides.

Similarly, when we write, we also need to acknowledge the original sources as a show of respect.

On top of that, citing the sources gives more credibility to the information, and thus to your article. Referencing is also important to avoid being criticized for plagiarizing other people’s work. For readers who are keen to know more about a particular point raised in the article, the references direct them to the original source for further information.

Referencing style
Referencing style may differ from company/publisher to company/publisher. Your editorial department may already have an in-house style manual for you to follow. The guidelines may be taken directly from a distinguished medical journal, e.g. JAMA (Journal of American Medical Journal), or modified from one. Remember to read those referencing style guidelines carefully.

In most referencing guidelines, references are identified throughout the manuscript with superscripted numbers, like this – ¹, though certain referencing styles may have the numbers enclosed in brackets, like this - (1). At the end of the manuscript, the reference list is presented in a numerical order, with each number corresponding to the respective superscripted numbers in the article.

Referencing sources from medical journals
A published paper reference contains these elements: authors’ name, name of the journal/publication in which the source is published, year published, volume number and possibly issue number of the journal/publication, and the specific page numbers of the source.

Below is an example excerpted from a event highlights that I wrote quite some time ago:

Up to 1 billion individuals worldwide are affected by hypertension,¹ an endothelial dysfunctional disease leading to cardiovascular morbidity and mortality.² It is very common among diabetic patients with renal disease. The simultaneous presence of hypertension and renal disease increases the mortality risk of these patients considerably.³...

References:
1. Chobanian AV, et al. JAMA 2003;289(19):2560-2572.
2. Bobik A. J Hypertens 2005;23(8):1473-1475.
3. Wang SL, et al. Diabetes Care 1996;19(4):305-312.

Note that:

• The journal names are abbreviated and set to italic font.
• For a paper authored by more than one person, I use ‘et al’ to represent ‘and others’. Different journals/publishers have different ways of doing this. I noticed papers in JAMA, for example, list all authors if there are not more than 6 of them. If there are more than 6 authors, their style is to name 3 and add ‘et al’ after the last name (see examples below). Mine only named the first author because I was trying to save space.
• Sometimes, if space allows, it is good to put in the title of the article, which I didn’t do due to the reason as in above.
• The issue number (i.e. number in bracket) may or may not be used.

Examples:

Patel V, Chisholm D, Rabe-Hesketh S, Dias-Saxena F, Andrew G, Mann A. Efficacy and cost-effectiveness of a drug and psychological treatment for common mental disorders in general health care in Goa, India. Lancet. 2003;361(9351):33-39.

Lin EH, VonKorff M, Russo J, et al. Can depression treatment in primary care reduce disability? Arch Fam Med. 2000;9(10):1052-1058.

Note:

• Examples are taken from Bolton P, et al. JAMA 2007;298(5):519-527.
• The titles of the articles are stated as well.

In short, no matter what referencing style you are using, it has to be consistent throughout the manuscript.

I will show some examples of referencing non-journal sources in my next post.

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