Writing High-Quality Medical Publications: A User's Manual

Everything about Writing High-Quality Medical Publications raises the bar on what a user’s guide should be. It's not only a compendium of the nitty-gritty, but a navigation aide to the medical writer's highest mission. The author, Stephen W. Gutkin, reaches for the North Star of professionalism here. . .and wants his readers to find their way there as well. Here’s a writer taking you beyond the perfunctory and the merely informational--though you get an array of helpful organizational tools and checklists to optimize manuscript quality and useful reference material. But, in ways rarely found, this eponymous “Gutkin Manual” gives both the novice and veteran medical writer crucial insights on a writer's first principle: to write convincingly with utmost credibility. It’s an “art and science,” as Gutkin puts it, and he tours us through an interesting professional landscape—from how to handle the basics of submitting a paper to a peer-reviewed journal to organizing a study and testing an hypothesis to keeping the integrity of the process in an especially-fraught and ruthlessly competitive commercial enterprise with many points-of-view to juggle.Gutkin might suggest I leave out this phrase at the end of this sentence, which borders on the banal, but one thing is true: A writer’s manual inevitably calls upon a reviewer to say a thing or two about the writing. Gutkin—witty, deft, wielding an eclectic vocabulary—holds his readers’ attention with linguistic legerdemain. He’s masterly on so many topics—from complex biostatistical tests to ethical transparency. He's careful to include choice insights into the gravitas of clarity. Just appreciate this deceptively simple question he asks of his readers in his section on conclusions: What is the single statement that will convey the most lasting meaning? We can also watch over Gutkin's shoulder as he re-writes prolix selections from published works, showing you the importance of keeping that editing scalpel close at hand. And, finally, the book is peppered with quotable nuggets he’s collected over the years that, frankly, make enjoyment one of this book's key attributes—beyond its status as (likely) the best existing overview to medical writing. You just don’t expect bon mots from John Updike and Henry David Thoreau and the Beatles, but that is what you get in the "Gutkin manual." In the end, it rises above being just a user’s manual to being an remarkable guide to a complex, evolving profession that demands extraordinary verbal skill, analytical acumen, scientific understanding, and marketplace savvy. The book deserves a place on every medical writing professional's bookshelf. But more than that, it deserves underlining, marginalia, dog-earing, and, perhaps, that occasional re-reading to remind the medical-writing professional just how his or her chosen craft can be done at its best. If I were you, I’d buy one for myself and send another to a colleague.

At last a users manual for writers of medical publications. Writing High Quality Medical publications explains and contextualizes the key elements of successful medical papers - compelling content, articulation of process and procedure, clear and consumable use and presentation of data, and, of course, understanding of and adherence to ethical standards of medical writing. A must have for medical writers and editors.

I thoroughly enjoyed reviewing Stephen Gutkin’s user manual Writing High-quality Medical Publications. It is well written, very comprehensive, and ‘user friendly’. All aspects of the process of preparing and writing a manuscript are well covered. As a biostatistician, I found his section on biostatistical methods to be thorough and written in an easily understood manner. I believe his manual would be an excellent reference for anyone preparing research for publication, whether it was their first or their twenty-first paper.Ann Zauber, PhD

While the book is more focused on writing medical papers, the principles can be applied to manuscript writers working in other fields. The book is an excellent resource for medical writers. While the book is intended for medical writers, I can recommend it to manuscript writers working in engineering, and the natural and social sciences.