How to Write a Clinical Case Report – A Beginner’s Guide
Writing a clinical case report can be very intimidating. You need to consider many critical things in such case reports. You must provide complete details on your chosen medical issue without revealing your patient’s identity. Your report should be able to convey a message that could help in the medical progress—because of this, writing a perfect case report can be very difficult, especially if you are a beginner. Well, you don’t have to worry now; this article has given a complete guide to writing a clinical case report very easily.
Clinical Case Report:
A clinical case report includes detailed reporting of a clinical patient’s treatment, diagnosis, signs, follow-up and symptoms. This type of case report usually explains a novel or unusual occurrence. These case reports can be helpful for medical progress as they offer new concepts and ideas related to medicine. Some clinical reports include a detailed review of related literature on a particular topic. These case reports consist of a short conversation between busy medical personnel with no time for a large-scale study.
A Beginner’s Guide To Writing a Case Report:
Don’t Start By Discussing With Your Medical Team:
It would be best to start by discussing some important aspects of your case with a medical team. This way, you can highlight some learning points. A registrar can be your mentor and give you proper guidance for your case report. It would be best if you also got advice from some medical students or junior doctors. After getting proper guidance, you should allocate jobs to your team and set the work timeframe and deadline. It would be best if you also listed the authors who will contribute to your report.
Come Up With A Perfect Title:
Your title is the most essential part of your clinical case report. Your readers will not read your report if they do not find its title interesting. Therefore, you should put effort into coming up with an excellent title that could grab the reader’s attention. For this, you can consult your supervisor and your team members. Make your title interesting and concise. Analyze the title of other good medical reports to get an idea. Get academic report help in case of any issues.
Do A Background Research:
Thorough research of the background of your case topic can help you a long way. You must properly research all the information about the disease you will study in your case report. If you face any difficulties, ask for professional advice from a specialist. You can also use the hospital library to find good information on your topic.
Your Case Must Be Unique:
There are so many clinical case reports. Therefore, it is important that you choose a unique angle for your report. Explore how you can present your case differently.
Write An Abstract:
An abstract is a very important part of your case report. It contains the whole summary of your work. Try to summarize your case as effectively as possible. Mention the medical issues you will address and the message you will convey. I advise you to write your abstract after completing your whole case report. But, keep your abstract paragraph on the first page of your report.
Introduction:
Your introduction should be an overview of the medical issue that your report is about. To write an effective introduction, you should cite relevant literature. It would be best if you ended your introduction with a sentence explaining your case patient and his/her condition.
Give Details Of Your Case:
After writing an introduction, the next section should describe the details of your case, such as:
- Description of patient
- History of your case
- Results from the physical testing
- Results from the pathological tests
- Plan for treatment
- Expected results from the planned treatment
- Actual results
You should ensure that you have included all the important information and excluded all the unnecessary details.
Put Most Of Your Time On Discussion:
Discussing your medical issue is the most important part of a clinical case report. This process is the same like the process of dissertation proposal writing. This is the part that will convince your supervisor about the journal that this report is worth publishing. It would be best if you began this section by explaining what you said in the introduction, emphasizing that the report is noteworthy. After this, you should summarize the relevant literature on your case topic.
If you want, you can also make a separate section of the literature review. In your literature review, you should describe your main issue’s existing theories or findings. Make sure your review is specific and contains relevant information. The last part of your discussion should be the message you want to convey. You should explain how this message can be helpful for the medical community.
Conclusion:
You should end your case report with a conclusion containing summary points. You should write the main points you have conveyed in your report. You can also give recommendations and suggestions to the researchers, teachers or clinicians for the medical issue.
Notes On Patient Consent:
Informed consent from the patient is an ethical requirement of a clinical case report. Therefore, before start working on your report, you should take the patient’s consent in written form. If your patient is a minor, then his/ her parent’s consent is needed. For an adult who cannot give consent for your research, you can reach out to the closest family members. It is also important to consider patient anonymity. Remember that you must not disclose any personal details of your patient that could reveal his/ her identity. You should also be careful with images and ensure that the images do not reveal a patient’s identity.
Conclusion:
Follow the above tips to write an extraordinary clinical case report, even if you are a beginner. Research your medical issue and discuss your topic with your medical team. Try to cite as much relevant literature as you can. We assure you that you can easily stand out in your case report by following the above guideline.