Correspondence

VOLUME 17 NUMBER 2 MARCH/APRIL 2004

Scientific writing skills of medical personnel in India: An evaluation:

Introduction
Scientific communication, written and oral, is an essential skill for all scientists. However, no formal training in this field is imparted in our medical schools. It is probably assumed that the students will pick up these skills by themselves as they undergo training in various components of the medical curricula. However, the efficacy of this approach is not known. Little information is available on the knowledge about scientific writing and communication among medical personnel in India. We, therefore, decided to evaluate the knowledge about scientific writing and communication skills of medical personnel.

Methods
Participants attending a 2-day workshop on scientific communication were requested to complete a questionnaire at the beginning of the workshop.

Results
All the 32 workshop participants responded to the questionnaire and represented a wide cross-section of age, research and publication experience, and medical specialties. Two respondents did not provide demographic details; the remaining 30 participants were 23–43 (median 31) years of age and included 8 serving or retired faculty members from various institutions, 7 senior residents, 4 junior residents, 3 scientists, 3 senior research fellows, 1 senior medical officer, 3 PhD students and 1 editorial staff member of a medical journal. Most (24 of 30) participants had published one or more scientific papers (median 4; range 0–100).

Of a maximum possible score of 100 for the 10 questions asked, the median score was 62 (range 16–78). Nine of the 32 (28%) participants had a score below 50. Responses to some of the individual questions are shown in Table I. The total scores obtained by the respondents had no significant correlation with their age (r = –0.32; p=ns).