ome journals have begun publishing summaries intended for patients or the lay public to explain a procedure or condition or summarize or comment on articles that report scientific or medical findings in the same issue. These summaries are designed for physicians to share with patients or to assist physicians in talking to patients. In the 2002 indexing year and forward, the patient summaries are indexed with the new Publication Type - Patient Education Handout. Figure 1 shows a citation to a "patient page" in JAMA.

 

For patient handouts that summarize other articles, we are also creating links, similar to "comment" links, between the Patient Education Handout citations and the citations to the full articles that they summarize. We began creating these links in the 2002 publication year. The links will appear in PubMed with the text "Summary For Patients In" on the original article citation, and "Original Report In" on the patient handout citation. See Figures 2 and 3 below for examples of these links. (Please note that the links in these graphics are not active.)

 

 

Patient Education Handouts in MEDLINE^®/PubMed^®. NLM Tech Bull. 2002 Mar-Apr;(325):e4.