State health university
BFUHS: thesis format, and what only your department can tell you
BFUHS publishes a thesis guidebook with real, specific format rules — paper weight, margins, point sizes, and Harvard rather than Vancouver referencing. It is filed under PhD ordinances and carries no date, so this page gives you the rules and both of those limits together.
- Body
- State health university
- State or UT
- Punjab
- What this page has
- Format · scope unconfirmed · 5 sourced rows
The record
The record
Read, and its scope stated with it
What the document says, and what it does not settle
The figures below were read in a document this body published. That document's own scope or date is unsettled, and the row saying so carries the same weight as the rows with the figures in them.
BFUHS publishes a document on its own site titled Guidebook for Submission of Theses/Dissertations in Electronic Format, subtitled Guidelines, Format Features and File Naming Convention. Its format instructions are addressed to candidates generally: one side only of high-quality plain white unlined bond paper, minimum 85 gsm, A4, erasable paper excluded. Arial at 12 point for the text, titles 14 bold, subtitles 12 bold, letter-quality or laser printing rather than dot matrix, the same print size throughout. Double spacing except for long quotations, footnotes and endnotes, which are single-spaced, with triple spacing around scientific equations. Left margin 1.5 inches for binding, 1 inch on the other three, and an oversized figure folded so the 1.5 inch left margin stays free.
Source: BFUHS Guidebook for Submission of Theses/Dissertations in Electronic Format
Three details from the same guidebook that decide work you would otherwise redo. Page numbers go at the bottom right, Roman on the preliminary pages and Arabic on the text pages, and every page is numbered including plates, tables, diagrams and maps. The abstract runs to a maximum of 200 to 300 words with a minimum of five and a maximum of ten keywords separated by semicolons. And the reference list is set to the Harvard author-date system, annexed to the guidebook in full — not Vancouver. If your department expects Vancouver, that is a conflict to settle in writing before you build a reference list, not after.
Source: BFUHS Guidebook, pagination, abstract and referencing
The title page in that guidebook is specified by point size rather than by wording: the title in Arial 22 bold centred, the contributor, department and college blocks at 18 bold centred, the year with its month at 16 bold centred, and everything else at 12 centred. Its worked example is a clinical thesis submitted to BFUHS from a government medical college, which is closer to a medical postgraduate's case than most template examples get.
Now the two limits, because they matter more than anything above. The file is served from a directory on the university's site named for PhD ordinances, and we found no date anywhere on the face of the guidebook — so reading it settles neither its scope nor whether it is current. Nor did we find in it any of the things a binder will ask you for: no page limit, no cover colour, no binding type, no number of copies. Treat it as evidence of the house style this university asks for, and put the scope question to your department in these words: does the university's guidebook for submission of theses and dissertations govern my MD or MS dissertation, and is there a later version of it?
One more thing we noticed by reading both. Long stretches of this guidebook are the same sentences as the ABVMU guidebook in Uttar Pradesh — the paragraphs on paper, type, spacing, margins and photographs are the same sentences in the two documents, which means both are adaptations of a shared original rather than rules drafted for that university from scratch. And they are not identical where it counts: BFUHS puts the page number at the bottom right, ABVMU puts it in the centre. That is exactly why a template from another state, however respectable, is not a substitute for your own university's copy.
What we read, and when
Read on 11 September 2026: the BFUHS Guidebook for Submission of Theses/Dissertations in Electronic Format, published on bfuhs.ac.in. Its format instructions are restated here in our own words. It carries no date on its face and is filed under a PhD ordinances path, and we say so rather than presenting it as the MD and MS format.
A figure that is not on this page is not a figure we are withholding. It is one we could not read in a published document, and printing it anyway would cost you a reprint at best. How this register is built.
The floor
The floor
Regardless of the template
What applies whatever your format says
Four instruments decide the substance of a postgraduate thesis in India. A local format decides how it is typed.
Whatever your university's template says, the Post Graduate Medical Education Regulations, 2023[1] sit under it. In force from 1 January 2024, they keep the thesis compulsory for every broad and super-specialty postgraduate, have it assessed within the practical and viva examination, and have it judged by an external examiner from outside the state. They also require one research activity, a research methodology course and GCP training before the final examination. A university format can be stricter than that. It cannot release you from it.
One limit on that, if your degree is an MDS. Those regulations are the National Medical Commission's and they govern postgraduate medical education. Dental postgraduate education has its own regulator and its own instrument, and we do not state here what that instrument requires, because we have not read it for you. Ask your department which regulation your dissertation is assessed under, by name — the answer should not be the NMC's.
Ethics comes before everything, including the format. Institutional Ethics Committee approval must precede any data collection under the national ethical guidelines[5], informed consent is mandatory, and a prospective interventional study is registered with the Clinical Trials Registry of India. No amount of reformatting repairs a dataset collected before approval was granted, which is why this is the first date to fix and never the last.
On similarity, most health universities apply the convention established by the 2018 academic integrity regulations[3]: below 10% treated as acceptable, with graded penalties above it. Which tool produces the report, and what is excluded from the count, is set by your institution rather than nationally. We work to whatever threshold your institution publishes, and to the under 10% convention where it publishes none.
And authorship does not vary at all. You satisfy the ICMJE criteria[4] and we do not. Mentoring, editing, statistics and compliance review belong in your acknowledgements; our name appears nowhere in your author line. That holds at every body in this register.
The checklist
The checklist
Ask, do not assume
What to confirm with your own department
Take this list to your guide or the postgraduate section and come away with written answers. Every item on it changes the document you produce.
Confirm before you write the methods chapter
14 items
Whether the university's Guidebook for Submission of Theses/Dissertations in Electronic Format governs your MD or MS dissertation, and whether a later version exists.
Whether your department wants Harvard author-date referencing, as that guidebook sets, or Vancouver as medical practice usually expects.
The page limit, cover colour, binding type and number of copies, none of which that guidebook states.
The deadline for submitting the synopsis or protocol, counted from your date of joining, and whether a late window exists and what it costs.
The deadline for submitting the dissertation itself, and whether it is fixed to a calendar date or to a number of months before your examination.
Page or word limits, and whether references, tables, the master chart and annexures count towards them.
Paper size, font, font size, line spacing and the four margins, including the wider margin left for binding.
Binding type and cover colour, and the exact wording and layout the title page must carry.
How many hard copies go to the department, how many to the university, and whether a soft copy is required and in which file format.
Which certificates must be bound in: the candidate's declaration, the guide's and co-guide's certificates, the head of department's and head of institution's endorsements, the ethics committee approval and the similarity report.
Which similarity-checking tool your institution runs, which percentage it treats as acceptable, and what is excluded from the count.
The referencing style, and whether the university names one style or accepts any consistent international style.
Whether your dissertation is submitted to the university directly or through your college, and who signs it on the way.
Whether the university runs its own protocol review in addition to your institutional ethics committee, and how long that review takes.
Ask for these by name
The current version of the Guidebook for Submission of Theses/Dissertations in Electronic Format, with its date, and a statement of which courses it covers.
The referencing style your department will accept, in writing.
The supervisor and co-supervisor certificate wording the university requires.
Why written answers
A format passed on verbally between batches drifts. The margin survives and the page cap does not, or a certificate that was added last year never reaches you. Ask for the document, note its number and its date, and keep it. If your department cannot produce one, that is itself the answer, and the thing to do is get the current circular from the university rather than copy a senior's thesis.
Our part
Our part
How MDThesis works with this
We format to the document you bring
Your department signs your submission, so your department's copy of the format is the one we build to.
On the first call we ask for two things: the current format document for BFUHS, and a title page your own department has already approved. The draft is set to those from the first chapter rather than reformatted at the end, which is when a page cap becomes expensive. Where the two disagree, your department's copy wins. Where your university is stricter than any convention, the stricter rule is the one we follow.
The checklist above is not homework we have set you. Your mentor goes through it with you and the answers become dated rows on your record, with the deadlines counted from the dates your own body uses. An MDSoftune word-level uniqueness report ships with every draft version, so similarity is visible while a chapter is still in draft rather than at submission. We do not operate the checker your institution runs and cannot predict the figure it will produce.
What we do not do: write your thesis, promise a grade or an approval, or put our name anywhere in it. You are the author. How the work is actually divided.
Non-affiliation statement
MDThesis works to these published standards. It is not affiliated with, approved by, accredited by or endorsed by any of the bodies that issue them, nor by any university. Naming Baba Farid University of Health Sciences, Faridkot on this page means we have read or looked for its published thesis rules. It does not mean the body has reviewed, approved or endorsed this page or this practice.
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Document: BFUHS thesis format · Revision 2 · Last reviewed
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