Re: Respecting a new right

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 57, No. 9, November 2015, Page 380 Letters
By: John Maile, MBBS,
Related To:

Respecting a new right: What are physicians’ responsibilities?

I wish to contribute to the thinking on the developing changes discussed in the COHP article on assisted suicide [BCMJ 2015;57:248-249]. It is usually referred to as “doctor-assisted suicide,” which implies that the doctors will be doing the heavy lifting. My suggestion is that there is already a functioning bureaucracy in place that could/should take the lead here.

I refer to coroner’s officers. They could be in charge of the preliminary paperwork, which would include the involved physician’s opinion and clinical findings. They could discuss with the family and, in the event of a decision to proceed, issue the order for a prescription for fentanyl patches, to be applied by the patient or relatives. Susan Rodriguez would have been happy with such an arrangement.
—John Maile, MBBS
Quesnel

John Maile, MBBS,. Re: Respecting a new right. BCMJ, Vol. 57, No. 9, November, 2015, Page(s) 380 - 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