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Sure, technically summer has just begun. But for the writers at the Medical Post—it is already half over. We are thinking about the fall as we start production on the September issue of the magazine at the beginning of August. Also, we are definitely starting work on great journalism for our well-read Doctor Daily newsletter for September. You can help by letting us know what kind of content you’d like to see for Canada’s working doctors! ONE: Ask us to: Ask an expert: Is there something in your practice that you’d like to know more about? Here’s an example of a question a doctor asked us to research recently: “I never hear much about insurance. We are a seven-physician newly formed group. A consultant suggested we needed directors’ and officers’ insurance (D&O insurance) do we? Also: what insurance for staff? WSIB or is there a better alternative for more blanket insurance coverage?” Got a question you’d like us to get experts’ take on? Send it to me or our Healthcare Reporter Marjo Johne at mjohne@ensembleIQ.com. TWO: What money-saving tips can we research for you? For our October issue of the magazine—our annual Finance Issue—our writer Louise Leger (lleger@ensembleIQ.com) is looking to provide quick money-saving tips. “How to get the best deals on insurance, cellular plans.” Any suggestions for topics? THREE: Doctors doing surprising things. There’s out of the box. Then there’s waaay out of the box, as in busting out of the carton. If you’re a doctor doing something highly unusual–like doing standup comedy in your spare time, or raising a family of eight children–we want to hear from you. Our Healthcare Reporter Marjo Johne is looking to profile some doctors who do surprising things. Is that you? Know a doctor like that? Send us a note! Colin Leslie is the editor-in-chief of the Medical Post and can be reached at cleslie@ensembleIQ.com. GENERAL GUIDELINES FOR ONLINE ITEMS If you would like to write a commentary or opinion items, we don’t run such in the print magazine anymore; instead we do run them in our well-read Doctor Daily Monday-to-Saturday newsletter. Physicians are a peer-to-peer audience so physician- (or medical student-) written items work best. Items that work best are those where the writer is addressing something that impacts doctors every day in their work. Items should ideally be anywhere from 500 to 1,200 words and ideally should be making an argument about one thesis: “I/we believe ... because....” type thing. It needn’t be controversial (though it is great when it is about something doctors are genuinely divided about!) but aim to be conversational. There’s no pay for one-off items but they have good readership among physicians. For non-physician writers—as a doctors’ magazine and newsletter—and I say this to everyone—really focus on: What is in it for doctors? Format: Just text in the body of an email is fine or a Word doc or something simple. Include a headline for your commentary if you can. If you can send a headshot of yourself/selves we could run with the item that’d be great. No real deadline as the newsletters run daily Monday to Saturday; just send to me (or managing editor Martha Porado at mporado@ensembleiq.com) when ready. CONFLICT OF INTEREST: err on the side of disclosing If you have any conflicts of interest or appearances of conflict of interest, we like to be transparent with our readers so please err on the side of mentioning it to the handling editor you're working with. Have a look at the link here: EXTRA INFO FOR ONLINE OPINION ITEMS TRANSPARENT IF YOU CHANGE PATIENT DETAILS We love running items in our Doctor Daily newsletter where doctors talk about impactful cases with patients! But you have to be transparent with readers if you’ve altered details of the cases or names. The Medical Post is a journalistic brand so the assumption if you write an item about a patient without any provisos is that it was literally true. “I had a 53-year-old woman come to my clinic with a fish bone in her eyeball.” Unless you say somewhere: “Some patient details changed” what you write has to be literally true: She was 53. It was a fishbone. It is also OK to make up a patient to make a point but again, you need to disclose that you did so. Just say, “Not a real patient. A composite of the types of patients I see.” Something like that. You can add it to the end of the story in italics if you like or in brackets. Similarly if you say “my patient David Jones”—in journalism the reader is right to assume that was literally your patient's name unless you say it was not. If you are not a doctor and writing about a service you provide for the physician community, we include contact info for you and your company in the author bio. We run such items when we think they are editorially interesting to the audience; we’ll often run one opinion item by an interesting org or company — often not a series. One factor: We look at digital metrics on the initial item to judge how interested the audience is in more… Note: About “no pay for one offs”: We can sometimes pay physician writers who will write regularly for us at $75 per item. However one has to write a couple of items for us before we talk about that—the amount of admin work on our part (and a bit on yours) to set a new writer up in our payment system for one payment means payment for writing just one item does not make sense. . . . —Colin Leslie, editor-in-chief, the Medical Post, cleslie@ensembleIQ.com

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