Case report of a patient I saw first

[Eyeball Tickler]

Hey guys,

I just wanted to get some thoughts. I saw an interesting case as a consult a few months ago after which I changed rotations. My attending at the time who saw the patient with me and the new consult resident who saw the patient a couple more times after I left ended up writing a case report on that patient which got accepted. I was not notified that a case report was being written and I certainly was not offered to contribute in exchange for authorship.

I can't help but feel a little upset that I wasn't at least asked as courtesy to be a part of this and contribute. In my experience during residency, if you have seen a patient or admitted the patient... then you essentially get first dibs. It has happened to me when one of my coresidents saw the patient first.. I had them write the case report as first author even though my PD asked me to write one not knowing who saw the patient first.

When I brought this up with the attending... she basically gave me a technicality and referred me to the ICMJE. At the end of the day it's a case report in a small journal so nothing life-changing.. but definitely feel like I got short-changed by my attending (who by the way is first author on the case report and my coresident is second or third author -- I thought usually residents were first authors).

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[GoSpursGo]

There are no hard and fast rules on these things. It’s a case report, you don’t need multiple residents to “contribute” to a relatively straightforward report. If you saw him first but only once, while the second resident saw him multiple times, I think either of you would be considered equally deserving of contributing. Frankly, if she saw the patient more times with the other resident, your attending may not even have remembered that you saw the patient—as you saw with your PD.

First author goes to whoever wrote the manuscript. Generally the junior person would be given the opportunity to write it and the attending would edit, but if the junior person doesn’t have time to do that then an attending can just write it up and be first author. Again... it’s a case report, so this really doesn’t matter much.

In any event, it would have been nice if they had included you, but I don’t think you were cheated. If you want to ensure that you’re given the publishing opportunity, in the future you should consider suggesting that a case be written up rather than waiting for an attending to come to you.

 

[Eyeball Tickler]

In any event, it would have been nice if they had included you, but I don’t think you were cheated. If you want to ensure that you’re given the publishing opportunity, in the future you should consider suggesting that a case be written up rather than waiting for an attending to come to you.

Thanks for your response. I agree with most of your points. I am very forthcoming about writing up any interesting cases... but this particular case was more of a slowburner so it wasn't evident at first that it would turn out to be interesting.

 

[GoSpursGo]

this particular case was more of a slowburner so it wasn't evident at first that it would turn out to be interesting.

And in this case, that probably is important--if most of the meaningful workup or management happened with the other resident after you went off service, it really probably does make more sense for them to write it.

 

[OrthoTraumaMD]

“Fairness” issue aside, it’s your attending’s patient, not yours. They can assign whomever they want to the case report. It might have been more convenient for them to assign the other resident. Don’t lose sleep over it and move on.