ANALYSIS OF ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN THE JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF EMERGENCY MEDICINE

Shon, Dae Kon; Song, Keun Jeong; Jang, Seok Joon; Lee, Han Shick

Abstract

To raise the quality of research, medical articles which are feasible and objective must be continuously published and be continuously monitored. All articles published in the Journal of the Korean Society of Emergency Medicine from November, 1990 to November, 1995 were compared with a foreign emergency medical journal, the American Journal of Emergency Medicine(AJE). Classifying the articles in the Journal of the Korean Society of Emergency Medicine, there were 15 (8.4%) review articles, 145 (81.0%) original articles and 19 (10.6%) case reports. In the AJE, there were 103 (15.1%) review articles, 304 (44.4%) original articles and 277 (40.5%) case reports. Classifying the original articles in the Journal of the Korean Society of Emergency Medicine, there were 13 (9.0%) experimental articles, 88 (60.7%) descriptive articles and 44 (30.3%) analytic articles. In the AJE, there were 40 (13.2%) experimental articles, 59 (19.4%) descriptive articles and 205 (67.4%) analytic articles. The classification of original articles according to frequency in the Journal of the Korean Society of Emergency Medicine is trauma, resuscitation, toxicology and medical emergency, where as the AJE is medical emergency, trauma, toxicology and EMS. For statistical methods used in original articles, 90 (62.1%) case did not do any statistical analysis or where only descriptive statistics were used. In 6 (4.1%) cases the statistical level was described but statistical methods were nonmentioned. By simple classification study, there were 44 (30.3%) cases of original articles in the Journal of the Korean Society of Emergency Medicine, and 6 (2.0%) cases in the AJE. Because the development of Emergency Medicine as a special department is based on logical articles, organization of articles have study design, make hypothesis, sample gathering, statistical analysis and feasibility of conclusion. For this, the emergency training course needs a course on research methodology.