A. Statement of Content

The New York Medical Journal is intended as a reflection of that process by which residents both participate in and further their own education as well as that of their peers. Its contents should reflect the integrity and diversity found at St. Barnabas Hospital (SBH). The major categories included in reviews, case reports, electrocardiograms, and radiological studies, shall be original subject material found in a resident's experience at SBH. Each shall have, at minimum, one reference.

Case reports shall be a means of presenting an approach to diagnosis and management of a patient, tracing the logical progression of the case and the thought process that took place by those caring for the patient. The basic outline of a case report should therefore be as follows:

1. History

2. Physical examination findings

3. Discussion of the initial differential diagnoses and narrowing of the diagnosis

4. Investigations including laboratory values and radiology information (please avoid nonstandard abbreviations)

5. Interpretation of the data

6. Final diagnosis of the case, including a detailed discussion of the etiology

7. How the diagnosis was substantiated

8. How the patient was managed

Electrocardiograms shall be original tracings with the appropriate history provided and a discussion to follow that includes appropriate references. Radiographs shall be original images with appropriate history, discussion, and references.

Topic reviews may start with brief reference to a pertinent case and should be based on a current literature investigation and search. Appropriate review articles should be referenced, and the resident may wish to include a description of the MEDLINE search criteria that was performed as well as notation of the search engine and the date of the search.

All pertinent sources including web addresses with the date of the page or electronic media must be documented appropriately. Printed or electronic copies of all referenced material should be made available on request within 4 working days.

B. Technical Guidelines - Text

Your submission should be in Microsoft Word®, or RTF.

The presentation format should be simple. Thoughtfully composed figures, tables and lists often help to accentuate key concepts and data. In general, we recommend conforming to common practices in standard medical journals.

• Use generic names for drugs

• Italicize non-English words (e.g., organism names)

• Avoid ward lingo (e.g., ‘pt’ for patient, ‘Cx’ for culture, ‘echo’ for echocardiogram, ‘vitals’ for vital signs, ‘BP’ for blood pressure)

• Spell out all but the most commonly accepted abbreviations and acronyms on their first occurrence with their abbreviations or acronyms put in parentheses before their subsequent use.

• Common Abbreviations and Acronyms: EKG, AST, COPD, CHF

Text

• Single-spaced, single-column, left and right justified, double carriage return between paragraphs

• Limit special formatting to standard bold, italics or bold italics

• Verdana font throughout

Please adhere to the following formatting guidelines for uniformity:

C. Technical Guidelines – Graphics, Sound or Video

Any graphic, photo, sound, or video files should be submitted separately even if they are already embedded in the document, preferably on CD-R or Zip^TM diskette.  If they are not embedded, please specify where they should be located in the document.  In general, it is important to submit the highest quality original possible as digital image processing can only filter out background noise and enhance the readability of the image but cannot re-create missing information lost in the initial image conversion process.

Photo or  Illustration Files

• JPG for graphics with complex colors and/or photographic material. A compression ratio of about 50% will produce a compact file with good quality.

• GIF or JPG for black and white line drawings. 

• Select a minimum resolution of 144 dpi with horizontal dimension of 900 pixels

EKG’s

Submit a printed duplicate with pink grids.  If an EKG must be photocopied, please experiment with the darkness and contrast settings until you get a photocopy with the background grids significantly lighter than the EKG tracings.

Sound Files

• Save in AIFF or MP3.

Video Files

• MPG only

We reserve the right to change or add to these guidelines as necessary.

D. Ethical Guidelines

The New York Medical Journal is an on-line journal. According to the SBH HIPPA advisor and the Institutional Review Board, contents of each submission may not include patient identifying information such as patient or family names, date of birth, medical record number, address, social security number, dates of admission, names of attendings of record.

This publication is considered exempt research and each individual author does not need to contact the patient or family that is presented in each case.  In the event that a picture is taken, efforts must be made to conceal the patient's identity. Additionally, for pictures, written consent must be obtained from the patient or family member and placed in the medical record.

E. Sending in Your Submission

Submit your article on floppy disc, CD-ROM or via email. No printed copy is required.

Please make back-up copies prior to submission, as these will only be returned for corrections or rewrites.

Remember to include your name, email address and contact number with each submission.  All personal information received is regarded as confidential.  If you would like a preview of your submission before final publication, please indicate so. 

Submit via inter-office to:  Reinaldo Rodriguez, Medical Library, Braker Building

Email to: reinaldo_rodriguez@stbarnabas-ny.org