Take steps to protect your online information

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 58, No. 10, December 2016, Page 584 News&Notes

Recently, a number of physicians’ business and personal email accounts have been breached and personal information stolen. While not many email accounts were affected, Doctors of BC is concerned there may be a targeted effort to hack into physicians’ emails. This is compromising the security of the physicians’ own information, and some of the stolen information has also been used to access PharmaNet patient accounts.

The RCMP and the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner are investigating the breaches. The Canadian Medical Association and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC are aware of the incidents, and MD Financial Management and Doctors of BC are implementing added security.

All physicians are encouraged to be extra vigilant.

Recommendations include:
•    Making sure your passwords are complex.
•    Not sharing your password information.
•    Adding three security questions to your Doctors of BC account that will activate when you need to reset your password.

Doctors of BC staff member Mr Patrick Wong has written a brief guide to creating complex passwords you can remember, which is available at www.doctorsofbc.ca/sites/default/files/dtotechnicalbulletin16-001-passwo....

To add three security questions to your Doctors of BC account, follow this link: www.doctorsofbc.ca/account/user/dobc_security_questions.
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Ms Heather Hannah, risk and compliance officer, at 604 638-2839 or hhannah@doctorsofbc.ca.

. Take steps to protect your online information. BCMJ, Vol. 58, No. 10, December, 2016, Page(s) 584 - News&Notes.



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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