How to Write Better Medical Papers

This book guides medical researchers through all stages of transforming their scientific data and ideas into a published paper. Many researchers in medicine, including the life sciences and health sciences, struggle to get their research written and published. Manuscripts are typically rejected and/or sent back for revisions several times before ever being published. One reason for this is that researchers have not received much instruction in the specific subjects and skills needed to write and publish scientific medical papers: research methodology, ethics, statistics, data visualization, writing, revising, and the practicalities of publishing.

Instead of wasting the reader's time discussing trivialities of punctuation, spelling, etc., this book tackles all the major scientific issues that routinely lead to manuscripts getting rejected from the journals. The section "Preparing" covers the range of methodological, ethical, and practical aspects that researchers need to address before starting to write their paper. The section "Analyzing" reviews commonplace problems in the statistical analysis and presentation, and how to resolve those problems. The section "Drafting" describes what to write in all the various parts of a paper (the Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Abstract, etc.) The section "Revising" explains and illustrates how to improve the writing style of any manuscript. The section "Publishing" discusses how to navigate the peer review process and all other practical aspects of the publishing phase.

This book draws on the author's decade of experience as an independent medical writer and research consultant, but it is not written merely as the personal opinion of yet another expert. The entire book is grounded in the existing scientific and scholarly literature, with extensive references and a lengthy annotated bibliography, so readers can quickly obtain more information on any aspect they want. Thus this book provides a more evidence-based, scholarly account of how medical scientific papers should be written, in order to improve medical communication and accelerate scientific progress.

After reading this entire book cover to cover, medical researchers will know how to write better quality medical papers, and they will be able to publish their work in better journals with less time and struggle. This book is essential reading for anyone conducting research in clinical medicine, life sciences, or health sciences.

Michael Hanna, PhD, is an independent Medical Writer and Research Consultant from New York City. He has over a decade of experience consulting on study design, conducting literature reviews, performing statistical analysis, and writing and editing scientific papers across the spectrum of medical specialties. He has lectured widely in Europe and North America on medical writing and has mentored many researchers and medical residents on scientific writing.

Michael Hanna earned a doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Cologne, Germany, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Cornell University's medical school in New York City. Previously, he earned a Master's degree in Psychology from the University of Paris VIII and a Bachelor's degree in Neuroscience and in French Studies from Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT, USA.

Prior to becoming a professional Medical Writer and Research Consultant, Michael Hanna taught at the University Hospital of Aachen, Germany. He also acquired clinical and scientific experience at the University of Cologne, Germany; the Raymond Poincaré Hospital in Paris, France; and other specialized clinics in America and Europe. He is fluent in German, French, and Spanish.