Changes in UBC medical school

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 50, No. 9, November 2008, Page 493 Letters

As a graduate of the first class in medicine at UBC in 1954, I found it most interesting to read the various articles in your September issue about the expansion and technical changes that have taken place in the last four years in that faculty. I particularly enjoyed reading the various comments made by the medical students who submitted their opinions about being the first ones to enter into the new system of teaching for three geographically separate learning areas. These students were obviously pleased to be the pioneers in this system.

Together with a group of my classmates I had the opportunity to meet some of these new students in the fall of 2004. The next year while I was in Prince George I was able to sit in on one of the medical lectures transmitted live from the UBC campus in Vancouver. The technology to achieve this was impressive, as it allowed for two-way communication between lecturer and students.

This year the first group of students has now graduated and I wish them all a rewarding life in their chosen profession.

—H. Webster, MD
Nanoose Bay

H. Webster, MD,. Changes in UBC medical school. BCMJ, Vol. 50, No. 9, November, 2008, Page(s) 493 - Letters.



Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

Leave a Reply