About Tim Albert Training

Effective writing for
healthcare professionals
Dorking, UK

This article appeared in the Spring 1996 edition of Short Words, the newsletter of Tim Albert Training. The author wished to remain anonymous!

Getting published: how to plan ahead

During the early 1980s three of us were junior doctors in a large hospital in the north of England. We became acutely aware that, to progress up the slippery surgical ladder, we needed publications fast. After a well-lubricated meal we talked business and looked at the market.

We had observed that interview committees rarely looked in detail at the quality of publications: a 'stamp collecting' approach seemed to achieve results. We also noted the increase in multi-author papers, especially from teaching hospitals whose doctors were the most successful at climbing the career ladder.

In order to achieve our objective of 10 publications each within a year we set the following ground rules.

Projects would be selected on the basis that the results would be publishable whether positive or negative.
Projects would require a minimum of time and effort to achieve a result. This excluded any projects involving pure science or the use of laboratory tests unless they were being done anyway.
Scientific merit would be a negative factor. The paper would indeed be publishable but would require too high a standard of work, and too much of it.
We would favour publications involving questionnaires, single case reports, letters, and reports of complications. These would be the easiest to carry out.

Our hanging committee met monthly to dream up new wheezes and allocate them to a syndicate member. We reviewed each other's work and dropped projects that appeared to be floundering or taking too much time. At the end of the year we had each had 10 publications accepted by a scientific journal - a sad reflection on editorial practice. We are all now consultant surgeons.

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