These guidelines are for authors writing articles which cover several clinical conditions (e.g. painful visual loss). If you are writing about a single clinical condition, see our clinical topic summary guidelines.
Although we generally prefer articles to focus on a single clinical condition, there are times when an article needs to cover several conditions (e.g. a summary of dermatological emergencies).
In these cases, we advise following the structure below.
Before writing your article, you should also read our article style guidelines which need to be followed for your article to be accepted.
Article structure
Introduction
Your article should begin with a brief explanation of the condition or topic that the article is covering. If the article is about a specific condition (e.g. ectopic pregnancy), you should begin by defining what the condition is. It may also be useful to include one or two key points about epidemiology (e.g. the prevalence, the incidence of condition) to help the reader gauge the topic’s practical relevance.
Condition summary section
Each clinical condition discussed in the article should have its own dedicated section with the following sub-sections:
- Introduction: including a definition of the condition.
- Aetiology: a brief explanation of the aetiology.
- Risk factors: key risk factors for the condition.
- Clinical features: typical history and clinical findings.
- Investigations: key investigations for the condition.
- Diagnosis (optional): diagnostic criteria for the condition.
- Management: key management options for the condition.
- Complications: key complications of the condition.
- Key points: a summary of the important points a student should take away from the article about the specific condition.
These are essentially a miniature version of our dedicated topic summaries, so check out those guidelines for further details and examples. It’s particularly important that any unnecessary details are excluded in articles which are covering several conditions, otherwise, the article will end up quite overwhelming.
We don’t require the inclusion of the differential diagnosis section that we normally have in our single topic summary articles, as this is less relevant in this context and would only add to the article length.
Final summary
A summary wrapping the article up, with key points relevant to the entire article (vs those included in each condition summary which relates to that specific condition).
