Medical Journalism and Emergency Medicine.

Introduction:

Nowadays, many researches in the field of medicine are conducting all around the world and medical journalism is a way to share the results. In fact, dissemination of the related manuscripts can prevent the repetitive research or may even lead to conducting a better survey. Therefore high quality medical journals are considered as up-to-date resources for further investigations (1, 2). Medical journals are propagating their papers in various media including television programs, newspapers, internet websites and different social media. So they can influence the government policy makers, health-care professionals and even public (3-5). Moreover, most researchers hear about medical discoveries for the first time through medical journals and their related social media. So as well a high quality journal can help to improve medical science, a journal of poor quality can be damaging and distorting. Indeed, popular journals have the power of inventing a “communication storm” to draw attention to a certain topic. Thus they have to respect the accepted international principles to prevent spreading inaccurate and misleading data (6, 7). This paper aims to review the previous and current situation of medical journalism by focus on field of emergency medicine.

History of Medical Journalism:

Journalism was considered as an innovation in the field of medicine in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. It was a way to share the researchers' experiences. With progression of the technology, medical journalism became a new element of disseminating medical information and help to accelerate the processes of medical changes (8). History of scientific journalism started by “Journal des Scavans” in Paris, and “Philosophical Transactions” in London in 1665 and both are existing today, after three and a half centuries." Journal des Scavans" was edited by Denis de Sallo and included book reviews, while" Philosophical Transactions" was edited by Henry Oldenburg and involved scientific news (9). The first peer-review collection of medical articles was published by "Royal Society of Edinburgh" in 1731, in Scotland. It seems that it was the start point of the professional medical journalism. They named their journal as “Medical Essays and Observation” which was published in five volumes. But in 1737 they spread their scope and covered the art, philosophy and particularly natural knowledge as well and were identified as Philosophical Society of Edinburgh (10, 11). “Medical Repository” was the first American medical journal, which founded in 1797. It was published quarterly and ceased publication in 1824 after 27 years. Loss of institutional support, prohibitive costs and lack of wishful editors were probably influenced factors on the journal breakdown (12, 13). John Collins Warren along with James Jackson founded “New England Journal of Medicine and Surgery and Collateral Branches of Science" as a medical and philosophical journal in September 1811 and published the first issue in January 1812.

After a series of events and because of financial difficulties finally, the Massachusetts Medical Society purchased it in 1921 for 1 dollar and renamed it to “The New England Journal of Medicine” in 1928. This Journal that named briefly as NEJM, is still being published by the Massachusetts Medical Society and is among the most reputable and trust worthy peer-reviewed medical jour nals and the oldest continuously published ones (14). After nearly two consecutive centuries, today a beautiful motto is inscribed with the name of this journal, "Innovation Today for the Promise of Tomorrow". “The Lancet” is another senior medical journal that has rare reputation. It was established by an English surgeon named as Thomas Wakley in 1823 and has been owned by Elsevier since 1991. In 2013 Journal Citation Reports, The Lancet s​ impact factor was ranked second among general medical journals (39.207) after The New England Journal of Medicine (54.420). 2013 Journal Citation Report Science Edition, Thompson Reuters, 2014. Some other famous journals have contributed in shaping the history of medical journals. Their names, alongside with those previously mentioned and their date of inception are summarized in table 1.

Table 1

The first medical journals in all around the world

Journal name	Inception date
Medical Essays and Observation	1731
Medical Repository	1797
New England Journal of Medicine	1812
Lancet	1823
British Medical Journal	1840
JAMA	1883
Chinese Medical Journal	1887

Journal of the American Medical Association

Medical Journalism in Iran:

Journalism in Iran was started by “Mirza Saleh Shirazi” who published “Kaghaz-e Akhbar” in 1837 in Tehran. Thereafter “Vaghaee-Etefaghieh ”was started to publish in 1851, in Tehran that included some medical news and public health topics along with the others(15). Based on available resources, it seems that “Hefz-o-Sehheh” which was published by the Society of Public Health (Anjoman-e Hefz-o-Sehheh) in 1901, was the first medical journal in Iran. Dr. Ali Asghar Nafisi was the first physician to establish a medical journal named as “Hefz-o-Sehheh” in 1906; also had the same name but differ from that published in 1901."Iranian Ministry of Health and Charity Affairs" (Vezarat-e Sehhyeh Va Omuor-e Kheiryyeh) started to publish the earliest state medical journal in 1921, named as "Sehhyeh and Omuor-e Kheiryyeh". As an innovation, the physicians were invited to submit their papers in the first issue of this journal (15). There were some other medical journals before 1934, the date of foundation of Tehran University Medical School, which may be considered as a revolution in medicine and medical journalism in Iran. Their names and date of inception are summarized in table 2. Based on the Iranian medical journals database, www.research.ac.ir/journals, today 347 active medical journals are available in Iran. Table 3 shows the baseline features of these journals.

Table 2

The first Medical journals in Iran

Journal name	Date of inception	Founder
Hefz-o-Sehheh	1901	Society of Public Health
Hefz-o-Sehheh	1906	Dr. Ali Asghar Nafisi
Tebabat	1908	Mirza Ebrahim Khan
Sehhat	1909	Seyyed Hossein Khan Edalat
Tebb-e Mossavar	1916	Mozayyan-ol-Soltan
Tebbi	1919	Mohammad Khan Alim-0-Doweleh
TebbKonuni	1920	Dr. Fatah Ali Khan
Sehhyeh and Omuore Kheiryyeh	1921	Ministry of Sehhyeh &Omuore Kheiryyeh
Tebabat	1922	Mirza Ahmad Khan
TebbJadid	1923	Unknown
Sehhat	1924	Unknown
Red Lion and Sun Journal	1925	Red Sun and Lion Society
Nedaye- Sehhat	1927	Dr. Seyyed Razi Sehhat
DavaSazi	1927	Dr. Fatolla Farrahi
Sehhat Nemaye Iran	1933	Dr. Mohammad Ali Totiya

Table 3

Baseline features of Iranian medical journals

Characteristics	n (%)
Indexing
Web of Science	22 (5.1)
Pubmed	42 (9.8)
Scopus	103 (24)
Embase	111 (25.9)
Unknown	319 (74.2)
Language
English	232 (54)
Persian	198 (46)
Frequency
Weekly	2 (0.5)
Monthly	21 (4.9)
Bimonthly	37 (8.6)
Quarterly	255 (59.3)
Biannually	30 (7)
Annually	2 (0.5)
Rank
Scientific/research	292 (67.6)

Emergency Medicine Journals:

On September 21, 1979 by positive vote of American Board of Medical Specialties, Emergency Medicine was introduced as a medical specialty to the world. Emergency Medicine is the specialty that due to its nature faced with a variety of patients, so was able to convince medical journals to pay special attention to it. The story does not end here and special journals dedicated to the emergency medicine. Top 10 active journals in the field of emergency medicine are summarized in table 4.

Table 4

Top 10 Emergency Medicine journals

Rank	Title	Country
1	Resuscitation	Ireland
2	Annals of Emergency Medicine	United States
3	Academic Emergency Medicine	United Kingdom
4	Shock	United States
5	Prehospital Emergency Care	United Kingdom
6	Current Heart Failure Reports	United States
7	Congestive Heart Failure	United Kingdom
8	Injury	United Kingdom
9	Scandinavian Journal of Trauma, Resuscitation and Emergency Medicine	United Kingdom
10	Critical care and resuscitation	Australia

Iranian Society of Emergency Medicine (ISEM) was developed in 2002. It is obvious that Emergency medicine is a young field In Iran and despite abundant oppositions continues to grow and progress. Despite the youth field in Iran, many of Iranian journals have included this topic in their respective fields (table 5).

Table 5

Iranian Emergency Medicine Journals

Journal Name	Since	Frequency	PubMed
Journal of Military Medicine	1999	Quarterly	-
Trauma Monthly	2006	Quarterly	√
Journal of Injury and Violence Research	2009	Biannually	√
Archive of Trauma Research	2012	Quarterly	√
Bulletin of Emergency and Trauma	2013	Quarterly	-
Journal of Safety Promotion and Injury Prevention	2013	Quarterly	-
Emergency	2013	Quarterly	√
Journal of Emergency Practice and Trauma	2014	Quarterly	-
Iranian Journal of Emergency Medicine	2014	Quarterly	-

Our frequent problems in medical journalism:

Frequent problems and obstacles in progression and qualifying of medical journalism could be categorized to five headings: problems related to authors, reviewers, editors, editor-in-chief, and managing editor (Table 6). Despite of old history of medical journalism in the world, it is recently mentioned as a professional topic in Iran. Solving the above-mentioned problems should be considered as the most important way for improving and qualifying the medical journalism in Iran. Training courses of professional medical journalism for editorial boards, public and mandatory scientific writing educations for medical students and education of critical appraisal skills for reviewers can be helpful in this regard.

Table 6

Frequent problems in medical journalism

Problems related to authors

Low quality articles Rejected manuscript from other journals Nonprofessional authors Submission errors Bad structures No appropriate reply to reviewer

Problems related to reviewers

Perfect review for bad articles Poor review for good articles Walking on a narrow edge of decision

Problems related to editors

Solitary Associate Editors Non-strategic leaders High expectations from primitive system Play in separate teams Understanding of real position and Editors-in- Chief mission

Problems related to editor in chief

To be or not to be? That’s the question Unrealistic target Leader with no follower Setting time and human resource-oriented strategies Poor cooperation with system Not having rules Decision making

Problems related to managing editor

Low scientific relation with journal title Unfamiliar with strategic planning Unfamiliar with potential power of the role Unable to connect all editors predefined strategy Lack of communication skills Monitoring of the play with information technology based modalities Poor time table Right plans will be wrong in action

Conclusion:

Historically, Iranian population have great defect in documentation of their findings and mostly rely on their memory. Anything that is not written will be forgotten and anything that is forgotten, never been existed. So write to persist the knowledge, never late to mend.