New bill may affect physician record keeping

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 54, No. 5, June 2012, Page 252 News

On 16 April the provincial government introduced Bill 34, the Limitation Act. This act changes the limitation period for civil lawsuits in the province. While the changes to the limitation period for physicians will be subtle, the primary impact will likely be felt in the area of record keeping. It is expected that physicians will need to keep patient records for longer than the current requirement of 7 years.

The BCMA was consulted twice in the last 5 years regarding these changes, and each time advocated to maintain the current limits; however, the government went ahead with these changes to match the limits that exist in Ontario and several other provinces. The changes are prospective, and more details will emerge as the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC updates their policies. 

The BCMA will update members as more information becomes available. Bill 34 can be viewed on the BC Legislative Assembly website at www.leg.bc.ca/39th4th/votes/progress-of-bills.htm.

. New bill may affect physician record keeping. BCMJ, Vol. 54, No. 5, June, 2012, Page(s) 252 - News.



Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

Leave a Reply