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Impracticable outdated ideas of supervisors is catastrophic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

Hussein Elkhayat

Dr_khayat@Hotmail.com

Thank you