A systematic guide for peer reviewers for a medical journal.

Performing a peer review of an article under consideration for publication requires not only an understanding of the subject matter, but also a systematic approach that includes screening for conflicts of interest; determining whether the manuscript is within or outside the reviewer's area of expertise; properly classifying the manuscript; and writing a detailed, organized review. Although some journals may provide guidelines for the reviewers, the guidelines usually are not detailed and do not take into consideration the variability in reviewer experience. This article is meant to serve as a guideline for peer reviewers and provide concrete information on how to write a comprehensive, unbiased review that will serve both the author and the journal well.

United States anesthesiologists over 50: retirement decision making and workforce implications.

Background: Anesthesiology is among the medical specialties expected to have physician shortage. With little known about older anesthesiologists' work effort and retirement decision making, the American Society of Anesthesiologists participated in a 2006 national survey of physicians aged 50-79 yr.

Methods: Samples of anesthesiologists and other specialists completed a survey of work activities, professional satisfaction, self-defined health and financial status, retirement plans and perspectives, and demographics.

Practice policies for older anesthesiologists in academic departments: a national survey of academic departmental chairpersons.

Study Objectives: To determine 1) which proportion of academic departments have policies concerning older anesthesiologists, 2) whether departments with such policies, particularly those related to call, had characteristics such as departmental size and proportions of older anesthesiologists that differed from departments without these policies, 3) if departments routinely screened their older members for problem behaviors, and 4) if departments provided nonclinical roles for older anesthesiologists.

Design: Survey instrument.

Setting: Academic medical centers.

Doctors in acute and longitudinal care specialties emphasise different professional attributes: implications for training programmes.

Objectives: Organised medicine mandates that professionalism be taught during specialty training. This study's primary objective was to determine the relative importance that doctors in different specialties place on different attributes of a medical professional.

Methods: Attending staff and resident doctors in acute care (anaesthesia, emergency medicine, surgery) and longitudinal care (internal medicine, psychiatry) specialties at a large academic hospital completed an anonymous, web-based survey.

Differential efficacy of intravenous lidocaine in alleviating ipsilateral versus contralateral neuropathic pain in the rat.

In the this study we have investigated the threshold plasma concentration of lidocaine for reversal of mechanical 'allodynia' in a neuropathic pain model in the rat, defined the concentration-dependent limits of that reversal and compared the acute reversal during intravenous drug infusion with the persistent relief of allodynia assayed 48 h later. Actions of i.v.