Case Reports?

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I'm currently on a elective rotation that has little to do with my chosen field. Last week during clinic I helped make a diagnosis of a rare condition which is benign but with an alarming presentation. The attending asked me if I wanted to write it up as a case report. I'm an M4 and the elective and case are not really related to the field I'm going into. I have very little experience with case reports. I don't imagine it'll matter much for my career. I like the idea of contributing to the body of scientific knowledge but at the same time being married with kids I try to be selective about when I devote extra time to things outside of my normal responsibilities.

How time consuming are case reports to write up? Are case reports just CV fluff?
Would it be worth my time to write it up even though it's completely unrelated to my future field of medicine?

Thanks for any responses.

Depends on what your aspirations are for your future career. If you are going family medicine or other primary care well outside the realm of academics, don't waste your time. However, even if it is completely unrelated to what you are going into, learning how to write case reports is useful if you are going to be a resident at a large academic institution and lowers the barriers to you doing so again in the future. Half of the resistance to writing your first case report is not knowing the basics of how to do it and how to go through the submission process. This is a good opportunity to get that out of the way.

Isn't a case report a publication (assuming it's published)? I can't imagine that wouldn't dress up your CV a bit, regardless of what field you're going into.

Originally Posted by Mass Effect

Isn't a case report a publication (assuming it's published)? I can't imagine that wouldn't dress up your CV a bit, regardless of what field you're going into.

It certainly won't look bad, regardless of what someone goes into. But, if you have something better to do with your time (wife/kids etc.) and you are going into a field where research is less important/not important, why waste your time?

Originally Posted by mimelim

Depends on what your aspirations are for your future career. If you are going family medicine or other primary care well outside the realm of academics, don't waste your time. However, even if it is completely unrelated to what you are going into, learning how to write case reports is useful if you are going to be a resident at a large academic institution and lowers the barriers to you doing so again in the future. Half of the resistance to writing your first case report is not knowing the basics of how to do it and how to go through the submission process. This is a good opportunity to get that out of the way.

Any good how-to's on how to write a case report? I have no clue where to even begin.

Thanks for the responses, guys. Mimelim, I may end up taking your advice. It might be a low stress way to get some practice writing a case report. I'm going into Child Neurology and academic medicine is a real career possibility for me.

And I'm with Alvarez13, if anyone knows a good how-to resource that would be great.

research the journals you want to submit to. each one usually has its own page about what they want in the case report and the specific format.

read some case reports in journal that you are thinking about submitting to (your attending can point you in direction) to get idea of what it's like

How do you get in on doing some case reports? Email an attending and say I want to write some case reports?

Originally Posted by MilkIsGood

How do you get in on doing some case reports? Email an attending and say I want to write some case reports?

My impression is that these opportunities only really present themselves if you get lucky on a rotation and happen to have an interesting patient with a rare disease/presentation. In that case, if the attending thinks it might be worth writing up, you can offer to help. Emailing an attending and saying that you want to do case reports is unlikely to work, since even if they happen to have an interesting case that they want to write up, you will not have seen the patient and followed the hospital course, so you will not be in a good position to write it.

Sometimes attendings have patients who they want to write case reports on but don't have time. For these attendings, if you ask, they can often pull it up and you can write it up.