How to avoid being sued

Mr Jonothan Earnshaw, BJS Academy Director, semi-retired Consultant Vascular Surgeon.

Authors are often asked to write a plain English abstract with the scientific manuscript, here’s how to do it. Listen to the podcast or read the article: Scientists and surgeons in particular have their own language for communication. We use technical terms for investigations and procedures, shorthand and jargon for the procedures themselves, and have a way of writing that is heavily stylized. In short we make our published material incomprehensible to those outside our club consisting of other scientific surgeons. For years we’ve got away with this because the only people that read our papers are like us. This has been changing gradually but the pace has accelerated as a result of the digital revolution, and in my opinion, also as a result of the COVID pandemic. Everyone listened avidly to the expert virologists talk about the COVID virus and it spread. The virologists communicated with us every day in a way we could understand. We are all expert virologists now! In the same way, access to material on the Internet and increasing awareness of health-related matters, and in some areas the difficulty in accessing medical services, has fuelled a thirst for information about medicine and surgery like never before. Added to that, the increasing availability of open access scientific material means there is more available for free. Why should our patients not have access to surgical science, after all many of them may have participated in the studies that have informed their care, and have every right to see and understand the results.

Mr Jonothan Earnshaw, BJS Academy Director, semi-retired Consultant Vascular Surgeon.

With audio content is becoming a preferred mode of learning, here is the BJS Academy podcast on how to make a podcast. Listen to the podcast or read the article: This is a podcast about, well, how to make a podcast. I have been making podcasts for about 10 years to advertise and promote the BJS, British Journal of Surgery and its output of surgical science. More recently I’ve been promoting BJS Academy, an educational website for surgeons worldwide. My podcasts usually describe new material on the sites, and act as a teaser to try and encourage surgeons to access the published material. The aim of this podcast is to tell you how I make a podcast quickly and easily. I expect to be able to make a five to 10 minute podcast in little over an hour from start to finish. Podcasts are made for many different reasons. Lots of people listen to them every day for entertainment and many celebrities make them for their fans and to promote their own work and ideas. In surgery, more and more people are making podcasts to enhance their surgical research. My interest is in the education and training of surgeons by disseminating and discussing surgical scientific research. So that’s my focus making podcasts. Obviously that’s different from popular podcasts made by celebrities for you to listen to in the car or on the train. So this podcast will focus on promoting surgical science, by providing a snapshot of what is available with recommendations about what to read..