Re: Choosing the right resident

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 53, No. 4, May 2011, Page 162 Letters
By: Dorothy M. Goresky, MD

It was with great interest and agreement that I read your editorial “Choosing the right resident” (BCMJ 2011;53:63-64). The old way had many advantages not present with the newer, shortsighted one.

My husband and I practised several years in Saskatchewan when num­erous small towns each had their own 12-bed hospitals. There we met and treated the local people and saw life first-hand. 

Four years later we headed to Kan­sas where my husband entered psychiatry. It was he who recognized that several people there were not mentally ill but had treatable organic conditions. This would not have been so without his experience in general practice.

Another value in someone having the choice to enter a specialty after experiencing general practice is that they now have a much clearer idea of the specialty which they would choose.

Let’s reinstitute the old way and scrap the new.
—Dorothy M. Goresky, MD
Vancouver

Dorothy M. Goresky, MD. Re: Choosing the right resident. BCMJ, Vol. 53, No. 4, May, 2011, Page(s) 162 - 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