NZ medical journal gets international recognition

Kiwi medical journal gets international recognition

A Kiwi healthcare publication has won international recognition for the exceptional quality of its medical research papers.

The Journal of Primary Health Care, which is published by the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners, is the first Kiwi primary care publication ever to receive prestigious Medline listing.

Journal editor, Professor Felicity Goodyear-Smith, says the Medline listing underpins all the hard work and faith of many New Zealanders who have contributed such outstanding and original healthcare research to the Journal.

“Medline is the world’s best known source of health and medical research and to receive listing in this database is absolutely fantastic,” Goodyear-Smith said.

“It’s an extremely valuable sign of international recognition for any medical research publication and it puts New Zealand primary healthcare and medical research on to the world stage.”

Medline is an international bibliographic database containing over 18 million references to journal articles in life sciences and biomedicine from about 5000 selected journals in 39 languages. It is published by the United States National Library of Medicine.

To be selected for inclusion in Medline, publications are vetted by an external advisory committee chartered by the US National Institutes of Health.

Successful publications must meet strict criteria, among which is the fact that they must publish original, peer reviewed research which must serve a particular healthcare audience that is not already well catered to.

In this case the Journal’s primary audience is the New Zealand and Pacific rim primary healthcare community.

As well as hard hitting research papers, the Journal of Primary Health Care canvasses medical issues about which there is, at the moment, no right or wrong answer.

The Journal facilitates professional debate on these issues, which can cover quite diverse medical and social issues such as whether we should have folic acid in bread, or should GPs actively screen for children with the controversial diagnosis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

The forthcoming September issue addresses the ethical dilemma of doctor-assisted suicide for the terminally ill.

“While the College of General Practitioners places considerable emphasis on evidence-based practice, sometimes complex, ethical or aspects of care issues arise for which there is no one right answer,” Goodyear-Smith said.

“Papers in the Journal on these medical issues cause considerable debate and evoke strong interest among readers.”

What makes the Journal’s achievement even more unusual is that its first issue was only published in March 2009.

“Its predecessor publication, which was published for 35 years, never received Medline listing despite trying on several occasions.”

Goodyear-Smith says New Zealand publishes more, and better, primary healthcare research per head of population than any other country. [1]

Goodyear-Smith says the Journal publishes a mix of inter-disciplinary material of relevance to general practitioners, nurses, pharmacists, physiotherapists, epidemiologists, medical academics and psychologists.

“The Journal’s approach to publishing original research reflects New Zealand’s team-oriented approach to primary healthcare,” she said.

The 88 page Journal is provided free of charge to the College’s 4000 members. The full contents are also free online at
http://www.rnzcgp.org.nz/jphc-june-2010-2. It is published quarterly.

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