The Medical Writing Center Model in an Academic Teaching Hospital

Area of Science:

• Medical writing
• Academic health centers
• Scholarly communication

Background:

• Editing services are rare in academic health centers.
• Limited data exists on their impact on scholarly output.
• This study examines an editing service at a pediatric teaching hospital.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe the medical writing center's editing service.
• To evaluate the outcomes of scholarly products (manuscripts, grants) over 8 years.
• To assess user satisfaction with the editing service.

Main Methods:

• Collected data from 2015-2022 on editing requests.
• Tracked publication and funding success rates for edited documents.
• Surveyed users on helpfulness, readability, and future use.

Main Results:

• Received 697 requests; 88.4% for editing.
• 81.3% of manuscripts and 44.4% of grant proposals were published/funded.
• 97.8% found edits helpful, 96.7% improved readability, 99.3% planned future use.

Conclusions:

• The medical writing center demonstrated steady usage and high user satisfaction.
• Editing services are effective tools for supporting faculty development.
• Such centers can significantly enhance scholarly productivity.