[Proposing a teaching program for the first of the 3 "I's" (english, informatics, internet) in medicine and surgery in Italy]. / Una proposta di programmazione didattica della prima delle tre "i" (inglese, informatica, internet) in Medicina e Chirurgia.

BACKGROUND: Since the beginning of the 90s, medical students in Italian Faculties have been required to pass a compulsory English exam. In the light of the growing importance of reasonably fluent spoken and written English at the start of the new millennium, the authors present an English teaching program spanning the 6 years of medical studies leading to a degree in Medicine and Surgery. THE PROGRAM: Features an initial test of basic English proficiency; the specific terminology: macroscopic anatomy, physiology, etc., to be learnt in the 3rd year; the true course in the 4th year, focusing on fluent spoken English, tips for formal correspondence and a knowledge of the typical format and language used in scientific papers; update courses in the form of medical seminars in the 5th and 6th years. CONCLUSION: No graduate in any field can be considered equipped for his/her chosen career unless he/she possesses an adequate knowledge of spoken and written English. The course presented aims to provide Italian medical students with the necessary skills.

[Type of surgical articles. Comparative study of 3 Italian and 3 foreign periodicals]. / Tipi di articoli chirurgici. Analisi comparativa di tre periodici italiani e tre periodici stranieri.

BACKGROUND: Medical progress in the world is divulged to peers and colleagues through books and scientific journals. It is thus linked not only to the quality of articles, but also to their type. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The type of articles published in three Italian periodicals (Annali Italiani di Chirurgia; Chirurgia; Minerva chirurgica) and three foreign periodicals published in English (Annals of Surgery; British Journal of Surgery; Surgery, Gynecology & Obstetrics) was compared. The articles were classified according to their potential contribution to medical progress, being divided into two main groups: research papers and simple case series or case reports. Other types of articles (reviews, description of surgical techniques, editorials etc.) were excluded from the study. RESULTS: Both the total number and the percentage of research papers were markedly superior in the three foreign journals with respect to the three Italian periodicals. All the differences were highly significant. CONCLUSIONS: The number of research papers published in Italian periodicals should be increased. Greater attention should be paid to quality, at the expense of quantity, since serious research inevitably takes longer to perform.

English teaching in the Italian medical faculties: results of a survey.

BACKGROUND: Although a compulsory examination in medical English has been present in the medical degree curriculum in Italy since 1990, guidelines indicating what should be learnt and suggesting some means of overcoming the various problems this entails are still lacking. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the main features of teaching English in the Medical Faculties and enquire into how the various problems are solved in the individual English teaching units. METHOD: A questionnaire addressing the above issues was sent out to all the Italian Universities with a Medical Faculty. RESULTS: The first finding of our survey was that response was very poor: less than 30% of the survey volunteered any reply. Within the very reduced sample which responded, there was a high degree of variation among the solutions adopted, although the underlying problems were perceived to be much the same throughout Italy. CONCLUSIONS: The general objective of the English course for medicine should be more precisely defined, together with a series of specific minimum skills the student should possess to pass the final examination. A closer collaboration among the English teaching units might help to standardize these requirements, improve the quality of the teaching and hence the level of proficiency in English for the specific purpose of medical practice.

A study of some international medical journals aiming to elicit stylistic guidelines for writing publishable papers.

OBJECTIVE: To provide some indications and guidelines on style and presentation for those aiming to publish in selected international journals. SETTING: University library in the Istituto di Clinica Chirurgica, Bari University Hospital. METHODS: A single topic, portal hypertension, was chosen to ensure a certain homogenity for the purposes of comparison, and the three most recent articles on this topic were identified in six international journals (three published in England and three in the USA; three in the medical and three in the surgical field) and studied from the points of view of style and presentation. RESULTS: Strong similarities were found among the 18 selected articles. In the interests of brevity, all were characterized by compact statements, qualified by lists of examples, and strings of adjectival nouns. In all, the Introduction and Conclusions sections were relatively short, the main body of the article being reserved to the Patients and Methods, Results and Discussion/Comments sections. Apart from very slight spelling or grammar differences characterizing English or American usage, all the articles could, with slight alterations in format in some cases, equally well have been published in any other of the journals studied. CONCLUSIONS: Brevity, even at the expense of elegance, and a straightforward, unambiguous, to some extent standardized, approach to the presentation of a scientific study, are essentials for the acceptance of an article for publication in the selected temational journals.