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Editorial |
Knowledge in the medical field is generated, tested, and modified every minute. Surely, few activities undergo as much questioning and so many changes. Every medical act, every response to therapy, every surgical outcome is a possible update to medical concepts.
If all of these impressions were published without any scrutiny, they would cause confusion about established principles; so that it does not, the dissemination of new knowledge in the medical field undergoes a rigorous selection process.
Initially, there is a rigid way of organizing and writing the paper to be published, based on very well-defined universal precepts. This rigidity is required to promote uniformity in the work so that comparisons can be made of works published in different places and times.
In the introduction, the authors should explain the reason for the proposed paper, support it in an objective way with three or four citations, and establish the goal of their work. Subsequently, the material to be studied should be clearly described, identified, and classified, the proposed or analyzed method should be described and once applied to the material it will produce results which should be presented objectively.
In the discussion, the author is responsible for addressing the literature relevant to the proposed work, its materials, its method, and finally the results. The author will clearly and objectively conclude if the goals cited in the introduction have been achieved.
Once the report has been written, it will be sent to the publication that will judge it through its editorial board. This judgment is stringent, for the person who is in the editor role knows that it will be the last filter for the dissemination of that knowledge. The editor, when recognizes that the work has merit, will suggest modifications to make it more suitable; the suggestion of a change is a form of acceptance, it is a positive act.
After all the publication steps have been completed, the study will be published and judged again, this time by the large community of readers.
Scientific output, the name given to this act of courage, which is to publish a scientific study, was for a long time an almost exclusively academic act, because the schools were linked to major public hospitals, in which there was the best and most modern equipment. The best specialists would stay in universities, because they could only develop themselves in this type of environment supported by government funds.
The government health care system was exhausted and had to devote itself to basic health, deviating from its function of innovation. The private health care system began to invest in the areas of the modernization of health, because these are their marketing weapons. The drying up of public investments and the investments in innovation in the private sector have led to a shift of the concentration of scientific production. Today, virtually all good hospitals have research institutes that foster scientific production.
Professor Adib Jatene notes in an article published in the Folha de São Paulo from November 11, 2008:
"... watching public hospitals hand leadership over to hospitals of excellence, which are not only at the forefront of knowledge, but also promote research, training, postgraduate studies, and scientific publications ..."
These facts have democratized scientific production; today the doctor has access to good hospitals, good materials, and literature through the Internet.
At the RBO, we are seeing a significant increase in the production of good quality work performed in clinics with no academic structure. We consider this a very positive occurrence.
The methodology required for writing follows basic rules, which once demonstrated, become very simple. We are making assistance for producing scientific papers available to our readers, trying to provide the necessary guidance. Please contact us.
Postgraduate services began to use scientific production as the currency for the valuation of its faculty, using it as a quality index for evaluation. These criteria have been spurred by the demands of CAPES and have led Brazil to be among the top 15 countries of the world in scientific production, being currently one of the countries that is most progressing.
The scientific production qualifies medical practice and is our way of advertising ethics, and should therefore be encouraged at all levels of medicine.
