Hurrah! Application complete

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 58, No. 5, June 2016, Page 249 Letters
By: T.W. Barnett, MD, FRCPC

I finally finished my application for reappointment.

Initially, after hours spent scanning documents and attaching them to the electronic application, I was informed by the department head that the application was incomplete. After three more phone calls (in the end I had to e-mail the documents in order for them to be attached to the application) it was finally accepted.

I am sure that the BC Medical Quality Initiative has the best interests of patients at heart, but I think their agenda has been overtaken by bureaucrats, risk managers, and lawyers when the result is one more hoop for physicians to jump through before obtaining privileges. It is starting to feel like privileges are not such a privilege!
—T.W. Barnett, MD, FRCPC
North Vancouver

T.W. Barnett, MD, FRCPC. Hurrah! Application complete. BCMJ, Vol. 58, No. 5, June, 2016, Page(s) 249 - 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