Wikipedia:Manual of Style (medicine-related articles)

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This Wikipedia page is currently inactive and is retained primarily for historical interest. Per Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines: "A historical page is any proposal for which consensus is unclear, where discussion has died out for whatever reason. Historical pages also include any process no longer in use, or any non-recent log of any process. Historical pages can be revived by advertising them. "
If you want to revive discussion regarding the subject, you should seek broader input via a forum such as the village pump.

WikiProject Anatomy has guidelines for articles related to anatomy here.

WikiProject Medicine has guidelines for choosing and using reliable sources here.

This page proposes style guidelines for editing medical articles. Of course, the general rules from the Wikipedia:Manual of Style also apply when writing medical articles.

Guidance on style
Manual of Style
Supplementary manuals
Abbreviations Biographies Capital letters Command-line examples Dashes Dates and numbers Headings Legal Links Lists of works Mathematics Music Pronunciation Spelling Text formatting Titles Trademarks Writing about fiction
Special article styles
Disambiguation pages Arabic transliteration China-related articles Ethiopia-related articles Ireland-related articles Islam-related articles Japan-related articles Korea-related articles Latter Day Saints Medicine-related articles Portugal-related articles
Other guidance
How to edit a page Guide to layout Captions Categorization Categorization of people Cite sources Explain jargon Footnotes Writing better articles Lead section Lists Music samples Naming conventions Overlinking Picture tutorial Proper names Sections Sister projects Technical terms and definitions Words to avoid

This policy/guideline proposal in a nutshell:

Article titles use the scientific or medical name.
Write for the average reader and a general audience – not doctors or patients.
Explain medical jargon or use plain English instead if possible.
Become familiar with the common sections, info boxes and citation templates.
Avoid trivia sections such as lists of notable cases.

1 Naming conventions
2 Infoboxes
3 Audience
4 Careful language
5 Sections
6 Citing medical sources
7 Navigation templates
8 Categories
9 Footnotes

[edit] Naming conventions

The article title should be the scientific or medical name rather than the lay term^[1] and where an eponym has been superseded.^[2] These alternative names may be offered in the lead section. Create redirects to your article to help those searching with the other names. For example, heart attack redirects to myocardial infarction, with appropriate explanations of the latter. Where there are differences between English speakers, an international standard should be sought to mediate. Some examples include:

Diseases - The World Health Organisation International Statistical Classification of Diseases (ICD 10).
Drugs - The International Nonproprietary Name (INN).
Anatomy - The Terminologia Anatomica.

[edit] Infoboxes

Infoboxes should be used where appropriate. These include

{{drugbox}} – for example Paracetamol.
{{Infobox Disease}} – for example Down syndrome
{{protein}}

Full instructions are available on their respective pages. Try to find a suitable picture for the infobox. For drugs, the 2D structure in SVG format is preferred, but PNG is also acceptable. The easiest way to populate the drugbox and protein templates is to use Diberri's template-filling web site. Search DrugBank for the drug and enter the ID^[3] in this page, or search HUGO for the protein and enter the ID^[4] in this page.

[edit] Audience

Wikipedia is written for the general reader. It is an encyclopedia, not a comprehensive medical or pharmaceutical resource or first-aid manual. Whilst doctors and patients may find much of interest, they are not the target audience.

How to spot you are writing for (other) doctors:

You use the word "patients" when describing those who have a medical condition.
You use jargon when perfectly good plain English words exist (for example, "renal" rather than "kidney").
You are tempted to lift text from your medical textbooks.
You remove any mention of non-mainstream treatments or practices (sometimes you must write for the enemy).

How to spot you are writing for (other) patients:

You use the word "you" when describing those who have a medical condition.
You give advice, particularly for when medical help should be sought or is required.
You are tempted to lift text from a patient information leaflet or website.
You mention treatments or practices that you've read about in a newspaper or from personal experience.
You add "helpful" external links, such as forums, self-help groups and local charities.

When mentioning technical terms (jargon) for the first time, try to provide a short plain English explanation in parentheses if possible. If the concept is too elaborate, wikilink to other articles (or Wiktionary entries). For terms related to anatomical position, you can link to Anatomical terms of location, e.g. [[Anatomical terms of location|lateral]]. Alternatively, if the technical word is not used again in the article, it may be appropriate to use plain English and place the technical term between brackets. The etymology of a word can be interesting and can help the reader understand and remember it.

Sometimes, information is specific to one country: for example, drug licensing or health service provision. Maintain an international perspective, for example by seeking out sources from other countries.

[edit] Careful language

Medical usage of common terms often differs from that of the general public. This is particularly common with medical terms being used in legal contexts, with related but significantly different meanings.

"Approved" and "indicated" mean different things, and should not be used interchangeably. Indications refer to common medical uses for a drug. Approval is a regulatory issue, which varies from country to country. Off-label refers to the use of a drug for a purpose other than which it was a approved for.
The phrase "psychologically addictive" has so many conflicting definitions that it's essentially meaningless. Replace the term with something specific. If you want to convey that a drug does not cause tolerance, or that its withdrawal syndrome is not life-threatening, then state that.
Sometimes positive and negative medical test results can have, respectively, negative and positive implications for the patient. For example, a negative breast cancer screening test is very positive for the woman being screened.
The term "drug abuse" is vague and carries negative connotations. In a medical context, it generally refers to recreational use which carries serious risk of physical harm or addiction. However, others use it to refer to any illegal drug use.

Be careful in your descriptions of medical conditions. Avoid saying that people "suffer" from an chronic illness or symptom, which may imply helplessness. Many patient groups, particularly those that have been stigmatised, prefer person-first terminology. For example: seizures are epileptic, people are not. In contrast, not all medical conditions are viewed as being entirely disadvantageous by those who have them. Some groups view their condition as part of their identity (e.g. some deaf and autistic people) and reject this terminology. For more advice, see Guidelines for Non-Handicapping Language in APA Journals.

Do not confuse patient-group prevalence figures with those for the whole population that have a certain condition. For example: "One third of XYZ patients" is not the same as "One third of people with XYZ".

Ensure your writing does not appear to offer medical advice. However, a disclaimer to this effect is not required^[5] since the general disclaimer can be accessed from any page on Wikipedia.

[edit] Sections

Boilerplate text with appropriate headings and infoboxes can be found here. Copying these can help provide a skeleton upon which to structure your article.

The following lists of suggested sections are intended to help structure a new article or when an existing article requires a substantial rewrite. Changing an established article simply to fit these guidelines might not be welcomed by other editors. The given order of sections is also encouraged but may be varied, particularly if that helps your article progressively develop concepts and avoid repetition. Do not discourage potential readers by placing a highly technical section near the start of your article. A disease that is now only of historical significance may benefit from having its History section moved towards the top.

[edit] Diseases/disorders

Clinical articles can achieve a level of consistency by limiting their top level headers to those specified below. However the spectrum of medical conditions is huge, including infectious and genetic diseases, chronic and acute illness, the life-threatening and the inconvenient. Some sections will necessarily be absent or may be better merged, especially if the article is not (yet) fully comprehensive.

Classification
Signs and symptoms
Causes or Genetics
Pathophysiology or Mechanism
Diagnosis
Treatment or Management
Prognosis (social impact may also be discussed)
Prevention or Screening
Epidemiology
History (not patient history)
Cultural references
See also (avoid if possible, use wikilinks in the main article)
Notes
References
Further reading or Bibliography (paper resources such as books, not web sites)
External links (avoid if possible)

Remember that etiology is not plain English. Characteristic biopsy findings can be described in the diagnosis section.

[edit] Drugs

The lead should highlight the name of the drug as per normal guidelines. The BAN or USAN variant may also be mentioned, with the word in bold. The initial brand name and manufacturer follows, in parentheses. Indicate the drug class and family and the main indications. The External links section is a magnet for online pharmacy spam and should be avoided if at all possible.

Try to avoid cloning drug formularies such as the BNF and online resources like RxList and Drugs.com. Extract the pertinent information rather than just dumping low-level facts in a big list. For example, a long list of side effects is largely useless without some idea of which are common or serious. It can be illuminating to compare the drug with others in its class, or with older and newer drugs. Think twice before including detailed dosage and titration information. Often such details border on trivia, can be country-specific and become quickly out-of-date or easily subject to uninformed edits.

History
Indications
Chemistry
Mechanism of action
Effects
Side effects
Interactions
Contraindications
Metabolism or Pharmacokinetics
Toxicity
Withdrawal
Overdose
Physical properties
Legal status
Veterinary uses
Cultural references
See also (avoid if possible)
Notes
References
Further reading
External links (avoid if possible)

[edit] Trivia

See also: Wikipedia:Avoid trivia sections in articles.

Avoid lists of trivia by working these tidbits of information into the main body text. Sections on history or on popular culture may help to structure such factoids.

[edit] Notable cases

See also: Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons and Lists of people.

Articles on medical conditions often include lists of notable individuals who have (or had) the disease. This may be manageable if the disease is rare. For common conditions, it can become a distraction from the main article and contain much unreferenced and dubious material. If you do include such a list, ensure your entry criteria are well defined so that future editors may know if their additions are welcome. One restriction that some editors favour is to include only those individuals who have lastingly affected the popular perception of a condition.

Unsourced additions, particularly for living persons, must be removed. Responsibility for justifying controversial claims rests firmly on the shoulders of the editor making the claim. Be very firm about high-quality references, particularly about details of personal lives. Entries in the list must be notable (a straightforward test of which is the presence, or realistic hope, of a Wikipedia article). Non-notable relatives of notable people should not be included.

If the list is (or could be) long enough to support a separate article, then consider splitting it off. The format can be prose, such as Sociological and cultural aspects of Tourette syndrome, or a list, such as List of people with epilepsy. Regardless, such articles must be well verified or they may quickly end up deleted. Wikipedia's Naming conventions generally discourage the use of words such as "notable" or "famous" in list titles. However, since the individuals in these lists are notable primarily for other reasons than their medical condition, some editors do include those words. For example: List of notable brain tumor patients.

[edit] External links

See also: Wikipedia:External links

Large disease-related organisations and government health departments often produce web pages containing substantial information that would be of interest to readers wishing to further study the topic. If the disease is rare, then a manageable set of charitable organisations may be of encyclopaedic interest. Otherwise, it may be better to link to a web page that lists such charities, rather than trying to provide such a list ourselves.

[edit] Citing medical sources

For guidance on choosing and using reliable sources, see WikiProject Medicine: Reliable sources and Wikipedia:Reliable sources.

For general guidance on citing sources see Wikipedia:Citing sources, Wikipedia:Footnotes and Wikipedia:Guide to layout.

Medical articles should be relatively dense with inline citations. It is not acceptable to write substantial amounts of prose and then add your medical textbook to the References section. It is too easy for a later editor to change the body text and then nobody is sure which statements are backed up by which sources. Unlike many established scientific disciplines, medicine attracts controversy and opponents on even the most basic and commonly held facts.

The Cite.php footnote system is preferred as a method of indicating your sources but is not mandatory - see Wikipedia:Footnotes for details. Some editors format their citations by hand, which gives them control over the presentation. Others prefer to use citation templates such as {{cite journal}}, {{cite book}}, {{cite web}}, {{cite press release}} and {{cite news}}.

Abstracts of most medical journals are freely available at PubMed which includes a means of searching the MEDLINE database. The easiest way to populate the journal and book citation templates is to use Diberri's's template-filling web site. Search PubMed for your journal article and enter the ID into this page. If you use Internet Explorer or Firefox (2.0+), then Wouterstomp's bookmarklet can automate this step from the PubMed abstract page. Take care to check all the fields are correctly populated, since the tool does not always work 100%. Some editors prefer to expand the abbreviated journal name. AMA citation guidelines suggest that if there are more than six authors, include only the first three, followed by et al.^[6] The URM citation guidelines list up to six authors, followed by et al if there are more than six.^[7] If the full text is freely available online, add this to the "url" parameter in the template (or hyperlink your article title, if doing it by hand). There is no requirement to include a "Retrieved on" date for convenience links to online editions of paper journals. For books, enter the ISBN into this page. A terse link to a PubMed article may be generated by typing PMID xxxxxxxxx in a similar manner to ISBNs, however full citations are preferred. For example:

 <ref name=hedley2004>Hedley AA, Ogden CL, Johnson CL, ''et al'': Prevalence of
  overweight and obesity among US children, adolescents, and adults, 1999–2002.
  ''JAMA''. 2004;291:2847–50. PMID 15199035</ref>

gives

Hedley AA, Ogden CL, Johnson CL et al: Prevalence of overweight and obesity among US children, adolescents, and adults, 1999–2002. JAMA. 2004;291:2847–50. PMID 15199035

There are a number of templates that help format citations for common medical web sites. Full instructions are available on their respective pages. Note that the most common ones are integrated in {{Infobox Disease}}.

Diseases Database: {{DiseasesDB}} and {{DiseasesDB2}}
eMedicine: {{eMedicine}} and {{eMedicine2}} - clinical overviews of disease entities by experts in the field.
GPnotebook: {{GPnotebook}} – medical database for British general practitioners (GPs).
OMIM (Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man): {{OMIM}} and {{OMIM2}} – database of genetic disorders.
PubMed: {{PMID}} – an alternative method of linking to PubMed that shows "PubMed" as the link, rather than the numeric ID.
PubMed Central: {{PMC}}
MedlinePlus: {{MedlinePlus}} and {{MedlinePlus2}} – plain English medical encyclopedia NIH.
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke: {{NINDS}}
SUNY Downstate Medical Center: {{SUNYAnatomyFigs}} – an excellent source of online anatomic preparations.
Who Named It: {{WhoNamedIt}} and {{WhoNamedIt2}} – medical eponyms and the people associated with their identification.

[edit] Navigation templates

WikiProject Pharmacology have created navigation templates for drug articles, which can be found here.

[edit] Categories

At the end of the article, place [[Category:THECATEGORY]] for the categories it belongs in, but use the lowest appropriate sub-level. Useful top-levels to start looking under include:

More can be found on this subpage of the medicine portal.

Stub articles may be categorised according to the list on this page.