Medical writing HUSSEIN ELKHAYAT , MD
“If you didn’t invent/create it and you
weren’t born knowing it – then you MUST
reference it.” -
This lecture material are collected from previous lectures and courses of :
Prof.Omar M Shaaban
Prof.Rabab A. Ahmed
Prof.Dalia G. Mahran
Dr.T.V.Rao MD THESIS WRITING FOR ( POST GRADUATE MEDICAL STUDENTS )
Faye Hicks - author
Writing your thesis
where to start?
WHO SELECTS THE THESIS TOPIC
supervisor OR STUDENT?
On many occasions supervisor suggest some topics with
better understanding, knowing very well the facilities
available in the Laboratory / Hospitals.
The student has also important role in accepting what has
been suggested,
Impracticable outdated ideas of supervisors is catastrophic
both to the students and to the department
Your supervisor will expect that:
You have identified a worthwhile problem or question which
has not been previously answered ?
You have solved the problem or answered the question or at least contributed some facts for better understanding on
the topic selected.
CONFLICTS IN supervisor
AND STUDENT RELATIONS
A non committed students and a irrational
supervisors are the real areas of conflict what we
see in the working environment .
Todays youth too are intelligent wise and well
informed they can understand strengths and
weakness of the supervisors in few days of joining
the Department
Even supervisor should practice the policy of
Humble to learn and wise to teach.
Obviously your external examiners will read the
thesis. They will be experts in the general field of
your thesis but, on the exact topic of your thesis,you are the world expert.
Keep this in mind: you should write to make the
topic clear to a reader who has not spent most ofthe last three years thinking about it.
How to review the literature
CAN INTERNET SEARCH SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF WRITING A GOOD THESIS
Many postgraduates usually search on the internet to find out
information for any thesis.
They find it interesting and obviously there is no place better
than internet where they can find all the relevant information.
However, the students are not aware of the contents and
patterns and often end up writing down something absolutely
meaningless.
Questions you must have asked when you have chosen the topic for your study
· What is the problem?
· What is the relevance of this problem?
· What information is already available?
· What do you hope to achieve by your study?
· What additional data are needed to meet the objectives?
· How these data are collected?
· Is it ethical to conduct the study in the way you want to do?
· How these collected data are going to be analyzed?
· What is the expected outcome and how much it is useful?
Whenever you read an article your must
haveanswered following questions:
What are the principal findings
· Strength and weakness of the study.
· How does the article compare in relation to
other studies, discussing particularly
any differences in results.
· Meaning of the study: possible mechanism and
implications for clinicians or
policy makers.
· Unanswered questions and future research.
You should have written these answers in paper
and attached it to every article you read and started filing according to the alphabetical list.
Organization
Make an ‘outline’ describing what you want the report to look
like.
Decide what objectives you will address and what information you wish to present.
Think about your reader
Decide what materials you will need to have on hand to write the
report. You should assemble all necessary information before you start to write. This includes preparation of all of your figures and
tables.
Now you are ready to start writing!
The “four drafts” approach to speed writing
Draft 1 –this is the ‘outlining’ stage. In this draft I list down the
complete table of contents, from chapters right down to the
lowest sub-sections
Draft 2 – This is the ‘brainstorming’ draft. The idea here is simply to dump all your thoughts and ideas. Don’t worry about sentence
order, grammar, spelling or punctuation – that will just slow you
down and interrupt the creative flow.
Draft 3 – this is the ‘sifting and sorting’ stage, where the first
seeds of paragraphs germinate, grow and flourish. First, go
through everything you dumped during the brainstorming session(s) and collect ‘like’ ideas into groupings. Next, start
thinking about topic sentences for these groupings. Then, flesh
out the supporting facts into full blown sentences. Organize
these supporting sentences into a logical order under their
respective topic sentences. Don’t waste any time trying to get
the wording absolutely perfect
Draft 4 the ‘preening’ draft. This is where you turn your
excellent technical content into excellent technical
prose. Check your grammar, spelling and punctuation.
How to write a paragraph !
Organization
Open a word-processor file for each chapter in a computer,
which is available
Do not forget to keep a copy with you on a flash disk orskydrive.
You can put notes in these, as well as text.
Organization
Make a back-up of these files and do so every
day
Never keep the back-up disk close to thecomputer
If you are not competent in typing and withcomputer you should have a physical filing system
A timetable
sit down with your guide and making up a
timetable for writing it.
If you have told your adviser that you will deliver afirst draft of chapter 3 on Wednesday, it focusesyour attention.
Beginning to real work
Do not be upset if a chapter - especially the first
one you write - returns covered in red ink.
Your adviser will want your thesis to be as good as possible, because his/her reputation as well as yours is affected.
It is often helpful to have someone other than
your adviser(s) read some sections of the thesis.
It may also be appropriate to ask other membersof staff to read some sections of the thesis whichthey may find relevant or of interest.
Your thesis may also be used as a scientific report
and consulted by other residents, future workers
who will want to know, in detail, what you did.More and more theses are now stored in an
entirely digital form
www.eulc.edu.eg
Dishonesty in scientific research
you must usually state where in the scientific literature that
result is reported.
If you don’t invent it , you have to cite it
The only exceptions are cases where every scientist in the field
already knows it: tachypnoea in pneumonia, oedema incongestive heat failure.
Fraud:
Turning in someone else's writing as your own;
inventing statistics or sources that do not exist; falsifying evidence
Plagiarism is the theft of other people’s words and
ideas. Plagiarism happens when you claim (or
appear to claim) that an idea, or the expression
of it, is your own when in fact it is someone else’s.
This either Intentional (deliberate) or unintentional
(accidental)
Plagiarism is the use of another author's
language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions, and
the representation of them as one's own original work (Ref: From the Oxford English Dictionary)
: بالغة العربية
االكاديميالسطو
Examples of Plagiarism…
Copying and pasting text from online encyclopedias
Copying and pasting text from any web site
Using photographs, video or audio without permission or acknowledgement
Using another author’s or your parents’ work and claiming it as your own even with permission
Using your own work without properly citing it!
How to Avoid Plagiarism…
1. Begin the writing process by stating your
ideas; then go back to the author's original
work.
2. To avoid plagiarism, you must give credit (i.e.
to mention references) whenever you use
another person’s idea, opinion, or theory.
3. You take any facts, statistics, graphs,
drawings or any pieces of information in your
own research writing.
How to Avoid Plagiarism…
4. If you are going to take the exact words from another source use quotation marks and then credit the source (author)
5. If you are going to take a scientific fact from a research article, write it in your own words not the exact copy of the authors words…this is called “Paraphrasing”. ….of course this should not change the scientific fact.
6. Even when you paraphrase another author's writings, you must give credit to that author.
References:
Diana Hacker's A Writer's Reference, 4th ed. (Boston
& New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999)
Examples of plagiarism detection servers and software
http://www.ithenticate.com/
http://www.plagscan.com/
http://searchenginereports.net/
http://www.duplichecker.com/
Style
The text must be clear. Good grammar and
thoughtful writing will make the thesis easier to
read. Scientific writing has to be a little formal
Some use : "at this point in time" instead of "now"
precisely because it takes longer to convey thesame meaning. THIS IS WRONG !
deadline
A thesis is so large a work that you cannot make it
perfect in a finite time.
There will inevitably be things in it that you couldhave done better.
There will be inevitably be some typos.
Structure of the thesis
title
Adequately describes the contents of the thesis in
the fewest possible words.
10–12 words
No unnecessary words, nor waste space with
phrases such as “Observations on” or “A study
of”
No abbreviations
PROBLEMS OF TITLES
Too short
Too long
Ambiguous or inappropriate for a journal
article
Poor syntax or careless grammar
Use of abbreviations or jargon
Acknowledgements
Most thesis authors put in a page of thanks to
those who have helped them in matters scientific,
and also indirectly by providing such essentials asfood, education, genes, money, help, advice,
friendship etc. If any of your work is collaborative,
you should make it quite clear who did whichsections.
STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS
Introduction: Why did the authors start?
Review of literature
Methods: What did they do?
Results: What did they find?
Discussion: What do the results mean?
conclusion
Introduction
Tell the reader why the research
was started
Make clear what question the
research was designed to answer.
Raise the interest of the reader.
Gives background or context of study
Reviews knowledge on topic
Justifies need for the study
Provides information on study objectives and hypothesis
Justifying Need for Study
The justification follows the general and
immediate problems and a review of current
knowledge that supports the need for the study:
“Because no studies to date have reported
outcomes, we examined.…”
“Evaluation of the results of the program was
necessary to develop future programs.”
General Type and Objectives
of Study
General type of study, such as experiment
or survey: “We conducted an experiment…”
“We surveyed the attitudes and practices…”
Objectives or hypotheses immediately
following study type:“The objective was to determine if availability of VATS resulted in higher
minimal invasive operation.”
What Not to Include
Do not include information that is not directly
relevant to your study:
Problems other than the one being examined
General information about the country
Details of the research design
What to Cite
Do cite the papers written on your specific
research topic.
Do not cite well-known facts (“Maternal
mortality is higher in developing countries than
in Europe”) or articles not read.
The introduction should not:
Explain what can be found in any textbook in the field
Be over-referenced; it should give only strictly pertinent references
Include data or conclusions from the work being reported
Write an introduction
section for:
Giving 60 year old men a cup of green tea every
day reduces their risk of heart disease
Methods
A detailed exposition of the research design.
A reader of the methods section should be able to repeat the study and to validate the findings.
A methods section less than two double-spaced pages is probably inadequate.
Study Group and Design
Contents and Sequence:
1. Participants
2. Informed consent
3. Design used
4. Method of assignment to groups
Materials and Procedure
Contents and Sequence:
1. Interventions
2. Information about study implementation
3. Provide parallel information for each group
Do Not Include
Background Information
Examples of materials used in study
Results
In General
Be precise: Specify the exact number of days
and hours of training, for example
Be concise: Use short simple sentences. Can
use standard jargon such as “randomized block
design” and acronyms like “ANOVA”
Established methods should be referenced but no description is necessary.
For published but not well known methods, a reference as well as a brief description should be given.
New or substantially modified methods should be clearly described, with reasons given for using them and with their limitations outlined.
The methods section should not:
Refer to patients and animals as material.
Use trade names of drugs; generic names should be used.
Ethics
Indicate whether the procedures followed were in
accordance with the ethical standards
When reporting experiments on animals, authors should
indicate whether the institutional or national guidelines or laws
on the care and use of laboratory animals were followed.
Statistics
Described in sufficient detail.
Any computer programs used should be identified. Statistical
terms, abbreviations, and symbols should be defined.
Details about randomization, concealment of allocation to
treatment groups, and the method of masking (blinding) and
losses to observation.
“A P value less than 0.05 was considered statistically
significant”, since the choice of this cut-off point is arbitrary.
Avoid non-technical uses of technical statistical terms, such as
“random” “significant”, “correlation” and “sample” in non-
statistical contexts.
Results
The objective of the research should be kept in mind.
Results that do not relate to the research objective should not
be mentioned.
Statistics should not take over the paper
Overview
Ways to Present Data
Text
Tables
Figures and illustrative graphs
Data always appears in the results section!
Overview - Text
Do not present data in table or figure if able
to present in text
Use text whenever there are small amounts
of data to be summarized
Do not repeat data presented in table or
figure in text
Overview - Tables
•Tables are arrangements of numbers or words
in columns and rows that display data or
relationships
• Allow presentation of exact values
• Present large amounts of data in a
small space
Parts of a Table
Title begins with a table number and describes the contents
Field is the space filled by rows and columns
Column headings describe column contents
Parts of a Table (cont.)
Heading straddle rule: Put a line over grouped columns
Rows and sub-heads: Indent to create sub-headings
Footnotes provide details that cannot be
included in title
Tables - Titles
Precise
Eliminate unnecessary words
Avoid repetition of headings of columns
and rows
Tables - Columns and Rows
Arrange columns and rows in logical
sequence
Round the data as much as possible
Include summary statistics for making
comparisons
Figures and Charts
Figures and charts give visual descriptions of
relationships between groups or numbers
Emphasize one point
Easily understood
Preferred for presentations
Chart Types and Uses
Bar chart: Values of a single item over
multiple units (e.g., dependent variable
over time periods)
Pie chart: Importance (in %) of categories
as part of whole (100%)
Stacked bar chart = Vertical Pie chart
Chart Types and Uses (cont.)
Line graph: Shows a variable over
time (e.g., trend line)
Scatter plots/X-Y plots: Show
association between two or more
variables (e.g., correlations)
Common Problems in Charts
Too many pie slices, bars, or segments
Ambiguous labels
Lack of contrasts between bars
Axes of unequal length
Presented in a logical sequence in the text, tables, and illustrations.
Tables and graphs are often extremely helpful in summarizing large amounts of data.
Numerical data contained in figures and tables should not be repeated in the text.
Big or little?Readers should not have to reach for a
magnifying glass to make out the details.
Color or no color?
Title or no title?
Never use a title for Figures included in a paper; the legend conveys all the necessary information and the title just takes up extra space.
CONSIDERATION ABOUT A GRAPH
Discussion
Good papers have a targeted
discussion, to keep it focused.
Structured to include the following
six components (Docherty and
Smith, 1999)
Statement of principal findings
Strengths and weaknesses of the study
Strengths and weaknesses in relation to other studies
Meaning of the study, possible mechanisms and implications for clinicians and policymakers
Unanswered questions and future research
Conclusion
Statement of principal
findings Start with a sentence that clearly shows that
the paper includes new information.
Reviewers often presume that the paper does
not add anything new.
Strengths and weaknesses of the
study
Equal emphasis should be given to both
strengths and weaknesses.
Don’t let the reader discover your weaknesses
A subheading such as “limitations of the study” or
data is useful.
Strengths and weaknesses
in relation to other studies
All evidence bearing on the argument, with or against, should be considered.
Discuss the opposing point of view
Avoid ignoring studies with similar results.
Strengths and weaknesses
in relation to other studies
Critically evaluate other papers’ methodology, findings and conclusions.
Differences in results should be discussed and possible explanations offered.
If you do not know why your results are different say so.
Meaning of the study
Possible mechanisms
Implications for clinicians and policymakers
Do not move beyond the limited evidence provided by the study.
Emphasize, not only what the results mean, but also what the results do not mean.
Unanswered questions and
future research New research may be proposed to provide
the answer to questions that are still not
answered.
Be specific.
Conclusion
The body of a good paper is a “thunderbolt in reverse”: it
begins with thunder (introduction) and ends with lightning
Avoid unqualified statements and conclusions not completely
supported by the data.
REFERENCES
HARVARD
VANCHOUVER
REFERNCE MANAGER
ENDNOTE
Mendeley
Endnote orientation
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