The CARE guidelines: consensus-based clinical case reporting guideline development

Abstract Background A case report is a narrative that describes, for medical, scientific, or educational purposes, a medical problem experienced by one or more patients. Case reports written without guidance from reporting standards are insufficiently rigorous to guide clinical practice or to inform clinical study design. Primary Objective. Develop, disseminate, and implement systematic reporting guidelines for case reports. Methods We used a three-phase consensus process consisting of (1) pre-meeting literature review and interviews to generate items for the reporting guidelines, (2) a face-to-face consensus meeting to draft the reporting guidelines, and (3) post-meeting feedback, review, and pilot testing, followed by finalization of the case report guidelines. Results This consensus process involved 27 participants and resulted in a 13-item checklist—a reporting guideline for case reports. The primary items of the checklist are title, key words, abstract, introduction, patient information, clinical findings, timeline, diagnostic assessment, therapeutic interventions, follow-up and outcomes, discussion, patient perspective, and informed consent. Conclusions We believe the implementation of the CARE (CAse REport) guidelines by medical journals will improve the completeness and transparency of published case reports and that the systematic aggregation of information from case reports will inform clinical study design, provide early signals of effectiveness and harms, and improve healthcare delivery.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/112624/1/13256_2013_Article_2617.pd

The CARE Guidelines: Consensus‐Based Clinical Case Reporting Guideline Development

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/101880/1/head12246.pd

Comparative Effectiveness Research: Challenges for Medical Journals

Editors from a number of medical journals lay out principles for journals considering publication of Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER). In order to encourage dissemination of this editorial, this article is freely available in PLoS Medicine and will be also published in Medical Decision Making, Croatian Medical Journal, The Cochrane Library, Trials, The American Journal of Managed Care, and Journal of Clinical Epidemiology

Career changes in medicine: Part II

We have known for some time that fewer medical students and internal medicine residents are deciding on careers in primary care. As we try to transform primary care into a desirable career choice, we need to know more about when students and residents make their decisions and why they choose primary care (or why they do not). An article in this issue by West and colleagues helps fill this important gap and allows us to follow the career preferences of a large cohort of residents in each of the 3 years of residency

Medical professionalism and the parable of the craft guilds

The medieval European craft guilds are the antecedents of today's professions. As a commentary on the article by Campbell and colleagues in this issue, the Editor argues that, like the guilds, the medical profession exists in a 3-way relationship with government and business. The parable of the guilds teaches us that community institutions must adapt or wither