How to make a podcast

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.

Jonothan J Earnshaw DM FRCS