Re: Primary care is the focus of Simon Fraser University’s new School of Medicine. Author replies

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 68, No. 8, October 2026 | Pages 271-272 | Letters | doi.org/10.66794/2c75
By: David Price, BSc, MD, CCFP, FCFP

Thank you to Drs McKay, Hertz, and Tsai for drawing attention to an important distinction in terminology in my recent interview about Simon Fraser University’s Stephens Family School of Medicine.

They are, of course, correct that specialties such as general internal medicine, pediatrics, and psychiatry are not primary care specialties. My comments should have more accurately referred to primary care and other community-based specialties, and I apologize for my error.

This distinction is well understood within our school and is reflected in how we are developing our medical education and postgraduate training. We are careful to emphasize to learners the distinct and complementary roles of family medicine, general internal medicine, pediatrics, psychiatry, and other specialties in the health care system.

Our intent is to prepare new physicians to meet the needs of communities across British Columbia while recognizing and respecting the unique expertise and contributions of each discipline. I appreciate the letter writers for providing the opportunity to clarify this important point.
—David Price, BSc, MD, CCFP, FCFP
Dean, Stephens Family School of Medicine

This letter was submitted in response to “Re: Primary care is the focus of Simon Fraser University’s new School of Medicine (1)” and “Re: Primary care is the focus of Simon Fraser University’s new School of Medicine (2).”

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

David Price, BSc, MD, CCFP, FCFP. Re: Primary care is the focus of Simon Fraser University’s new School of Medicine. Author replies. BCMJ, Vol. 68, No. 8, October, 2026, Page(s) 271-272 - 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