Pharmacy Residents: Citing, Presenting, and Writing

As part of their education, residents will create handouts, cases, and presentations for use in Pharm D courses. These materials should use AMA style for references. Determining what information needs to be cited can be challenging. Explore the content in this guide (the few guidelines below, books and videos linked), reflect upon the use of citations in assignments you received in Pharm D education, or discuss your specific situation with course faculty, residency supervisors  or the library to ensure you strike the right balance between citing and expressing your view clearly.

Guidelines for citing.

- Data, facts, ideas and opinions taken from another source, whether paraphrased, summarized, or quoted, need to be cited. You may be citing articles, books, drug monographs, websites, and other types of materials-- if you took the information from somewhere else, cite it.

- Common knowledge does not need to be cited. Unfortunately, "common knowledge" changes from field to field, so it is difficult to make a single list of common knowledge. As a test to help you assess "common knowledge," pretend that the information you are considering citing is used as a headline in a pharmacy professional newsletter. If your reaction to this headline is, "That doesn't deserve to be a headline-- it's not very new or novel or interesting," you may have found common knowledge. However, as an educator, you are trying to communicate with students who have a different body of knowledge than you do, so you still may find that it is beneficial to cite things you consider common knowledge to aid students in finding relevant additional readings.

The library owns many other guides on writing, formatting styles, and research. Search the Health Sciences Libraries Catalog or talk to a librarian to find additional titles.