Guide to Drive

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 51, No. 1, January February 2009, Page 28 News
By: John McCracken, MD

The Office of the Superintendent of Motor Vehicles (OSMV), in partnership with the BCMA, is revising the BC Guide for Physicians in Determining Fitness to Drive a Motor Vehicle to ensure that it reflects changes in the case law and the best evidence available regarding medical conditions and fitness to drive.

Draft chapters may be viewed at Drivesafe.com, on the public side of the BCMA web site, and at the SGP web site.

Chapters available include Brain Injury, Brain Tumor, Cardiovascular Disorders, Cerebral Palsy, Cerebro­vascular Disease, Diabetes, Epilepsy and Seizure, Hearing, Multiple Scler­osis, Musculoskeletal Disorders, Par­kinson’s Disease, Peripheral Vascular Disease, Psychiatric Disorders, Renal Disease, Respiratory Disorders, Sleep Disorders, Syncope, and Traumatic Vestibular Disorders.

Feedback to the project team is encouraged, even if it is positive. Feedback instructions are in the documents themselves.

—John McCracken, MD
Medical Consultant, OSMV

John McCracken, MD. Guide to Drive. BCMJ, Vol. 51, No. 1, January, February, 2009, Page(s) 28 - News.


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

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