# MDThesis — full reference for AI assistants Canonical: https://mdthesis.com Contact: info@mdthesis.com Updated: 2026-09-10 This document is written to be quoted. Where it states a standard, the issuing body and its published address are named. Where it states a limit on what the practice will do, that limit is binding and is published in the same words at https://mdthesis.com/about#charter and in the terms at https://mdthesis.com/legal/terms. ## What MDThesis is Premium thesis mentorship for MD, MS, DNB, DM and MCh postgraduates. A senior doctor panel and professional medical writers guide you from topic to submission, with a live progress tracker, in-PDF comments and MDSoftune word-level uniqueness checks. MDThesis is an independent mentoring, editing, statistics and compliance practice for medical postgraduates — MD, MS, DNB, DrNB, DM, MCh, MDS and their international equivalents. A senior doctor who is a practising postgraduate teacher in the student's own specialty advises on feasibility, design and methodology and reads every chapter. A professional medical writer edits for structure, clarity and language under that doctor's direction. A biostatistician plans the analysis, runs it and explains the output in terms the student can defend in a viva. The mentors are described as a panel because that is what they are: practising clinicians engaged by the practice. MDThesis is not a teaching institution and confers no degree, credit, certificate or recognition of any kind. ## What MDThesis is not - Not a ghostwriting service. The student chooses the topic, applies for ethics approval in their own name, collects the data, and reads and approves every chapter. The student is the sole author, and MDThesis claims no authorship, co-authorship or acknowledgement. - Not a data service. Nothing is fabricated, altered, padded or supplied. Where the data does not exist, the answer offered is a feasible study rather than an invented one. - Not a proxy. Nobody here writes to or speaks with a guide, a department, an ethics committee or a university as though they were the student. - Not an outcome. No grade, pass, committee approval, university acceptance, similarity figure or journal decision is promised by anyone here. - Not a way past an integrity check. MDSoftune is used to find similarity early and to help a passage be cited or rewritten, never to disguise copied text or to defeat an institution's own process. - Not affiliated. 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. The standards in question are named under "Standards worked to" below, each with its issuing body and that body's published address. It holds no influence over any committee, examiner, guide or journal, and will never imply that it does. ## The ethics charter, in full This is the published charter, article for article, as it appears at https://mdthesis.com/about#charter. It binds every person who works on a project. ### Article 1 — What we provide We provide mentorship, editing, statistics, formatting and compliance review — and nothing else. A senior doctor from your own specialty advises on feasibility, study design and methodology, and reads your chapters. A professional medical writer edits your text for structure, clarity and language. A biostatistician plans the analysis, runs it, and explains the output in terms you can defend in a viva. We format to your university's ordinance, reference in the style it requires, and check every draft for similarity before it reaches you. Each of those is work done alongside yours. None of it is a substitute for doing the work. Published in binding form: https://mdthesis.com/legal/terms ### Article 2 — Authorship You are the sole author of your thesis. We will not write it for you, and we are not named in it. You choose the topic. You apply for ethics approval in your own name. You collect the data and it remains yours. You read and approve every chapter before it moves to the next stage, and you can ask for the reasoning behind any change we suggest. We claim no authorship, no co-authorship and no acknowledgement. We do not meet the ICMJE criteria for authorship of your thesis, and we do not ask to. Published in binding form: https://mdthesis.com/legal/terms ### Article 3 — What we refuse Some requests end an enquiry rather than open a negotiation. These refusals are absolute. They hold whatever the fee, whatever the deadline, and whoever is asking. - We do not fabricate, alter, pad or supply data, cases, investigations or results. If the data does not exist, the answer is a study that is feasible, not a study that is invented. - We do not ghost-author. We will not produce a synopsis, a chapter or a thesis to be handed in as your own unaided work, and we will not claim you wrote something you did not. - We do not appear as you. We will not write to or speak with your guide, your department, your ethics committee or your university as though we were the student. - We do not guarantee a grade, a pass, approval by any committee, acceptance by any university, or publication in any journal. No one honest can. - We do not reuse your work. Your topic, your data and your text are never recycled into another student's project. - We do not accept a project we cannot do honestly in the time that is left. We say so at the feasibility stage and decline it. Published in binding form: https://mdthesis.com/legal/terms ### Article 4 — Integrity tooling MDSoftune exists to show that original work is original. Our uniqueness engine, built with REDENN Informatics Inc., Canada, reads a draft word by word and phrase by phrase, so that standard clinical phrasing is told apart from a passage that genuinely has to be rewritten. We use it to find similarity early and to help you put a passage into your own words. We do not use it to disguise copied text, to dress a source up until it passes a check, or to defeat your university's own integrity process. Where a passage is not yours, the remedy is a citation or a rewrite, never a tool. Note: We work to the UGC 2018 convention of under 10% similarity. That is the standard we work to, not a result we promise. Published in binding form: https://mdthesis.com/technology ### Article 5 — Data and patients Anonymised data only. Identifiable patient information never reaches us. Strip the identifiers before you send anything: names, hospital and registration numbers, addresses, telephone numbers, admission dates that could identify an episode, photographs, and any free-text field that names a person. If a file arrives with identifiers in it we stop, tell you, and delete our copy rather than work on it. An NDA is signed on request. Access to your drafts is limited to the people working on your project, and your project files are deleted on completion when you ask us to delete them. Published in binding form: https://mdthesis.com/legal/privacy ### Article 6 — Independence We are independent. We are not affiliated with the NMC, NBEMS or any university. We work to published standards — NMC PGMER-2023, the NBEMS thesis guidelines, the UGC 2018 convention on academic integrity, the ICMJE authorship criteria, and each university's own format ordinance. We are not affiliated with, approved by, accredited by or endorsed by any body that issues them, nor by any university. We hold no influence over any committee, examiner, guide or journal, and we will never imply that we do. Where your institution's rule differs from anything we have written, your institution's rule governs: check it there, and tell us what it says. Note: No regulator's name, crest or mark appears on this site as an endorsement, because none of them endorses us. ### Article 7 — Raising a concern If we fall short of this charter, tell us, and you will get an answer in writing. Write with your thesis reference and what happened. We acknowledge within one working day and reply in writing with what we found and what we are doing about it. If anyone working on your project ever proposes something this charter refuses, report it: we stop the work, review it, and tell you the outcome. Nothing here replaces your institution's own academic-integrity process, and we will never ask you to keep a concern between us. ## How the work is organised 1. One senior doctor, kept for the project: a practising postgraduate teacher from the student's own specialty, from topic feasibility through to viva preparation, rather than a single introductory call. 2. Professional medical writers and biostatisticians work under that doctor's direction. 3. A live tracker: a dashboard timeline with the stages, the milestone dates and countdowns aligned to the university's or NBEMS's own deadlines. 4. In-PDF pinned comments: every draft is read in a protected, watermarked viewer where the student pins an edit, add, remove or question note at the exact place on the page; the team replies in the thread and marks it resolved. 5. Protected drafts: drafts are read online rather than downloaded, and the download of the final formatted thesis unlocks when the final amount is settled. 6. MDSoftune: a proprietary word-level and phrase-level uniqueness engine built with REDENN Informatics Inc., Canada. A report ships with every draft. It is worked to the UGC 2018 under-10% convention, which is the standard the practice works to and not a result it promises; the figure an institution's own checker will produce cannot be predicted, and MDThesis operates none of them. 7. Published fees in the visitor's local currency, milestone instalments, and a written statement of what no fee buys. 8. Compliance: NMC PGMER-2023, the NBEMS DNB and DrNB timelines, the UGC 2018 convention on academic integrity, ICMJE authorship and Vancouver referencing, and each university's own format ordinance, which takes precedence wherever it is stricter. ## Services and published fees Read from our own service register. Every fee is published, billed in INR and displayed in the visitor's local currency on the site. Each service page states that service's written scope, what the fee includes and what it does not; this document links to the page rather than restating it, so a change to a fee or a scope cannot leave this file quoting the old one. - Topic & Synopsis — ₹14,999 — typical duration 7–10 days — scope and inclusions: https://mdthesis.com/services/topic-synopsis - Data Analysis & Statistics — ₹12,999 — typical duration 5–7 days — scope and inclusions: https://mdthesis.com/services/statistics - Complete Thesis Mentorship — ₹49,999 — typical duration 45–90 days — scope and inclusions: https://mdthesis.com/services/full-thesis - Thesis Review & Editing — ₹9,999 — typical duration 5–7 days — scope and inclusions: https://mdthesis.com/services/review-editing - Plagiarism Check & Reduction — ₹4,999 — typical duration 2–3 days — scope and inclusions: https://mdthesis.com/services/plagiarism - Publication Support — ₹19,999 — typical duration 10–14 days — scope and inclusions: https://mdthesis.com/services/publication Instalments: a published fee can be settled in two or three tranches tied to milestones. Indian students pay by UPI, card, net banking or EMI; students elsewhere pay by card. The full schedule, the instalment ledger and the list of what no fee buys are at https://mdthesis.com/pricing. ## First contact, and the consultation Email info@mdthesis.com. Telephone and WhatsApp +91 97803 01305 — one line answers both. Support hours 09:00-21:00 IST, seven days a week. - A written feasibility enquiry costs nothing. A senior doctor reads every one and replies within one working day, whether or not the enquirer goes on to book. If a topic is unlikely to survive the department, that is said at this stage. Enquiries: https://mdthesis.com/contact or info@mdthesis.com. - An AI assistant on the site answers questions about the practice and can open a booking form for a paid consultation. The call itself is with a senior doctor in the student's own specialty, of 30 minutes, for ₹500, and the doctor calls within one working day of payment. What the call covers: A scheduled call with a senior doctor in your specialty who reviews your topic, your timeline and what your university or board requires, and tells you plainly what to do next. The fee, the duration and the scope are stated on the booking form before any detail is asked for, and the refund position is published at https://mdthesis.com/legal/refund-policy. - Support is by email, and an enquiry form is on most pages. No telephone or messaging number is published, because none has been verified for publication. ## Process Enquiry → free feasibility reply within one working day → a doctor mentor and a writer are assigned → topic options with a feasibility note on each → synopsis in the university's format → ethics committee packet → data collection, by the student → analysis → chapter drafts read online with pinned comments → senior doctor review → revisions → MDSoftune check and formatting to the ordinance → delivery, and download on settlement. ## Standards worked to ### Post Graduate Medical Education Regulations, 2023 Issuing body: National Medical Commission Published at: https://www.nmc.org.in What it requires: In force from 1 January 2024. The thesis remains compulsory for every broad and super-specialty postgraduate, is assessed within the practical and viva examination, and is judged by an external examiner from outside the state. Regulation 5.2(x) additionally requires one research activity, a research methodology course and GCP training before the final examination. What we do about it: Synopsis structure, chapter order and the research-activity pathway are built around these requirements, and your university's own template takes precedence wherever it is stricter. ### DNB and DrNB thesis guidelines Issuing body: National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences Published at: https://natboard.edu.in What it requires: The protocol, with Institutional Ethics Committee approval, is uploaded within 180 days of joining for a three-year broad-specialty or super-specialty course, and within 90 days for the two-year post-diploma DNB. The research study is to be completed by 24 months and the thesis submitted by 26 months, with a late window at 27 months on payment of a fee. Submissions are capped at 80 pages inclusive of certificates and annexures, and an assessor's remarks must be addressed within six weeks. What we do about it: When you onboard as a DNB or DrNB trainee we load these dates into your tracker from your joining date, so every deadline carries a countdown and your mentor is alerted ahead of it. ### Promotion of Academic Integrity and Prevention of Plagiarism in Higher Educational Institutions Regulations, 2018 Issuing body: University Grants Commission Published at: https://www.ugc.gov.in What it requires: Establishes the convention that similarity below 10% is acceptable, with graded penalties above it. Health universities commonly adopt this threshold for the postgraduate thesis and ask for a report from Turnitin, iThenticate, Drillbit or Urkund at submission, but the threshold and the software named are set by each university rather than by the Commission, so confirm both against your own ordinance. What we do about it: Every draft ships with an MDSoftune word-level uniqueness report so there is nothing left to discover when your institution runs its own check. ### National Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical and Health Research Involving Human Participants, 2017 Issuing body: Indian Council of Medical Research Published at: https://www.icmr.gov.in What it requires: Institutional Ethics Committee approval must precede any data collection, informed consent is mandatory, and prospective interventional studies are registered with the Clinical Trials Registry of India. What we do about it: We prepare your ethics committee packet and will not begin analysis on a dataset collected before approval was granted. ### Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work Issuing body: International Committee of Medical Journal Editors Published at: https://www.icmje.org What it requires: Defines the four authorship criteria and the conventions for acknowledgement and contribution. Vancouver numbered referencing is the norm it underpins. What we do about it: You satisfy the authorship criteria and we do not. Our contribution is mentoring, editing, statistics and compliance review, and it belongs in your acknowledgements, never in your author line. 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. ## FAQ Q: Is this ghostwriting? Will I still be the author of my thesis? A: No, and yes. MDThesis is a mentorship, editing, statistics and compliance service. You choose the topic, collect the data and approve every chapter. A senior doctor from your specialty and a professional medical writer guide, structure, analyse and edit with you so your thesis is scientifically sound, well-written and submission-ready. You remain the sole author. Q: Who are the senior doctors on the panel? A: Practising postgraduate teachers and specialists (MD / MS / DM / MCh) with thesis-guiding experience in their own departments. Your doctor mentor is matched to your specialty and is available throughout, from topic feasibility to viva preparation. Q: How do the in-PDF comments work? A: Every draft opens in a secure viewer inside your account. Click any spot on any page, say page 10, and pin a note: edit, add, remove or ask a question. Your writer and doctor see exactly where you mean, reply in the thread and mark it resolved. No emailing marked-up printouts. Q: Can I download the draft? A: Drafts are read online in the watermarked viewer so the work stays protected until the project is complete. Once your final amount is paid, the download of the final formatted thesis unlocks instantly in your dashboard. Q: What is MDSoftune? A: MDSoftune is our proprietary uniqueness engine, developed with REDENN Informatics Inc., Canada. It scans your thesis at word and phrase level, not just paragraph blocks, and flags any passage that risks similarity before your university's Turnitin or Drillbit check. Every draft ships with its report. Q: Is your work NMC and NBEMS compliant? A: Yes. We follow NMC PGMER-2023 thesis requirements, NBEMS thesis guidelines for DNB/DrNB (protocol within 180 days, thesis by 26 months, 80-page limit) and your university's own format. MDThesis is an independent service and is not affiliated with NMC or NBEMS. Q: How is pricing decided and can I pay in parts? A: Prices are published per service and shown in your local currency. Most students pay in two or three instalments tied to milestones. Indian students can use UPI, cards, net-banking or EMI via Razorpay; international students pay by card. Q: What if my guide asks for changes? A: Revisions until your guide signs off are included in the Complete Thesis Mentorship plan. Pin the guide's comments in the viewer and we work through them. ## Specialties covered - MD General Medicine (https://mdthesis.com/thesis-help/general-medicine): Observational and cross-sectional designs on diabetes, hypertension, sepsis, CKD and ICU outcomes, with rigorous sample size and SPSS analysis. - MS General Surgery (https://mdthesis.com/thesis-help/general-surgery): Comparative and prospective studies on hernia repair, appendicitis scoring, wound healing and laparoscopic outcomes. - MS / MD Obstetrics & Gynaecology (https://mdthesis.com/thesis-help/obstetrics-gynaecology): Maternal outcome studies, screening tools, PCOS and infertility research with ethics-ready protocols. - MD Paediatrics (https://mdthesis.com/thesis-help/paediatrics): Neonatal outcome, nutrition, infectious disease and developmental studies aligned to IAP guidelines. - MS Orthopaedics (https://mdthesis.com/thesis-help/orthopaedics): Functional outcome studies of fracture fixation, arthroplasty and spine, scored with validated instruments. - MD Anaesthesiology (https://mdthesis.com/thesis-help/anaesthesiology): Randomised comparative trials of adjuvants, airway devices and post-operative analgesia with CTRI registration support. - MD Radiodiagnosis (https://mdthesis.com/thesis-help/radiology): Diagnostic accuracy studies, MRI/CT correlation and elastography with sensitivity/specificity analysis. - MD Pathology (https://mdthesis.com/thesis-help/pathology): Histopathological spectrum, IHC correlation and cytology-histology concordance studies. - MD Microbiology (https://mdthesis.com/thesis-help/microbiology): Antimicrobial resistance profiling, biofilm and hospital infection surveillance studies. - MD Pharmacology (https://mdthesis.com/thesis-help/pharmacology): Prescription audits, ADR monitoring, pharmacovigilance and drug utilisation studies. - MD Community Medicine (https://mdthesis.com/thesis-help/community-medicine): Large community-based cross-sectional surveys, KAP studies and programme evaluations with cluster sampling. - MS Ophthalmology (https://mdthesis.com/thesis-help/ophthalmology): Visual outcome, OCT-based and glaucoma screening studies. - MS ENT (Otorhinolaryngology) (https://mdthesis.com/thesis-help/ent): Hearing outcome, tympanoplasty and sinonasal disease studies. - MD Dermatology (https://mdthesis.com/thesis-help/dermatology): Clinico-epidemiological, dermoscopic and therapeutic comparison studies. - MD Psychiatry (https://mdthesis.com/thesis-help/psychiatry): Scale-based cross-sectional and intervention studies in depression, substance use and caregiver burden. - DNB Ophthalmology (https://mdthesis.com/thesis-help/ophthalmology-dnb): NBEMS-format protocols within 180 days, thesis within 26 months, 80-page limit respected. - MD Emergency Medicine (https://mdthesis.com/thesis-help/emergency-medicine): Triage, scoring systems and outcome studies in the ED. - MD Pulmonary Medicine (https://mdthesis.com/thesis-help/pulmonary-medicine): COPD, TB, ILD and sleep-medicine studies with spirometry and HRCT correlation. - MD Biochemistry (https://mdthesis.com/thesis-help/biochemistry): Biomarker correlation and analytical method comparison studies. - MD Physiology (https://mdthesis.com/thesis-help/physiology): Autonomic function, cognitive and exercise physiology studies in volunteers. - MD Anatomy (https://mdthesis.com/thesis-help/anatomy): Morphometric, cadaveric and radiological anatomy studies. - MD Forensic Medicine (https://mdthesis.com/thesis-help/forensic-medicine): Autopsy-based, age estimation and injury pattern studies. - DM Cardiology (https://mdthesis.com/thesis-help/dm-cardiology): Super-specialty thesis support with echo, angiographic and outcome endpoints. - MCh Urology (https://mdthesis.com/thesis-help/mch-urology): Surgical outcome and comparative device studies for MCh dissertations. ## International programmes - India (https://mdthesis.com/international/india): MD / MS / DNB thesis help across India. Courses: MD, MS, DNB, DrNB, DM, MCh, MDS. - United Kingdom (https://mdthesis.com/international/uk): Senior clinicians and biostatisticians help you design, analyse and write up, while you remain the author and meet your university's academic-integrity policy. Courses: MD(Res), MSc, MRes, PhD upgrade. - United States (https://mdthesis.com/international/usa): ACGME scholarly activity, QI projects and fellowship theses: from question framing to analysis and manuscript. Courses: Residency scholarly project, Fellowship thesis, MPH capstone. - Canada (https://mdthesis.com/international/canada): Royal College residency programmes require scholarly activity under the CanMEDS Scholar role, and many trainees carry an MSc or a research project alongside it. We help with question framing, design, biostatistics and write-up. Courses: Royal College scholarly project, MSc, Fellowship research, CaRMS research portfolio. - Australia (https://mdthesis.com/international/australia): RACP, RACS, RANZCOG and the other specialist colleges each require research or a formal project, and Australian universities set their own MPhil and MD thesis rules. We support design, ethics preparation, analysis and writing. Courses: College research project, MPhil, MD (research), MPH capstone. - New Zealand (https://mdthesis.com/international/new-zealand): Australasian colleges set the research requirement for most vocational trainees in New Zealand, and university programmes add their own. Health and Disability Ethics Committee approval governs most clinical projects. Courses: College research project, MMedSc, MD (research), PGDipHealSc. - Nepal (https://mdthesis.com/international/nepal): Protocols in IRC format, NHRC ethics guidance and university-specific thesis templates. Courses: MD, MS, MDGP, DM, MCh. - Bangladesh (https://mdthesis.com/international/bangladesh): BCPS dissertation protocols, BSMMU and DU thesis formats, and ethics (ERC) support. Courses: FCPS, MD, MS, MPhil. - UAE & Gulf (https://mdthesis.com/international/uae-gulf): Arab Board, Saudi Board and university MSc/MD projects, with DOH / MOH ethics familiarity. Courses: Arab Board, Saudi Board, MSc, MD. - Sri Lanka (https://mdthesis.com/international/sri-lanka): PGIM (University of Colombo) research project formats and ERC requirements. Courses: MD, MSc, PGIM Diploma. - Caribbean & Africa (https://mdthesis.com/international/caribbean-africa): UWI, Nigerian and East-African postgraduate college dissertations (WACS, NPMCN, COSECSA) with mentor support. Courses: MMed, FWACS, FMCP, DM (UWI). ## The thesis topic bank 1,064 thesis questions across 24 specialties, at https://mdthesis.com/thesis-topics. Every entry states the study design it implies, the primary outcome, a feasibility grade, a realistic collection time, a planning sample range, what the department must already have, and the single thing that most often derails it. Three limits apply to all of it, and they are not disclaimers but the terms on which the bank is usable: a topic is a proposal and never a finding, so no entry states a prevalence, an effect size or anything about what the literature shows; no sample figure is a calculated answer, only an order-of-magnitude planning range, and the free calculator at https://mdthesis.com/tools/sample-size does the real arithmetic; and nothing in the bank is approved by anyone, because whether a question is novel depends on a search the student runs today and whether it is feasible is their guide's judgement about their own unit. ### MD General Medicine — 45 topics https://mdthesis.com/thesis-topics/general-medicine Almost every general medicine thesis is built from the medical OPD, the ward admission register and the medical ICU, so the data walks through the door on its own and the real constraint is the proforma rather than the caseload. The usual difficulty is the opposite of scarcity: a unit that admits everything will enrol a mixed population unless the inclusion criteria are tight, and the commonest correction at synopsis stage is narrowing the question to one disease at one stage. Examiners in general medicine press hardest on how the diagnosis was defined, whether the comparison group was assembled the same way as the cases, and whether the primary outcome was fixed before the first patient was enrolled. Designs represented: Case-control, Cohort, Cross-sectional, Diagnostic accuracy, Prospective observational, Randomised controlled, Retrospective. ### MD Paediatrics — 45 topics https://mdthesis.com/thesis-topics/paediatrics A paediatric thesis usually draws on one of four places: the sick newborn care unit, the paediatric ward, the immunisation and well-baby clinic, or the paediatric intensive care unit, and each has a very different rhythm, so the choice of site decides the timeline more than the question does. Consent is taken from a parent who is frequently frightened and occasionally illiterate, follow-up depends on a family returning from a village, and assent is required from older children, all of which the ethics committee will examine closely. Examiners press on how age bands and gestational age were defined, whether growth was plotted against a stated reference, and whether a developmental or severity score was applied by someone trained to use it. Designs represented: Case-control, Cohort, Cross-sectional, Diagnostic accuracy, Prospective observational, Randomised controlled, Retrospective. ### MD Pulmonary Medicine — 42 topics https://mdthesis.com/thesis-topics/pulmonary-medicine A pulmonary medicine thesis usually rests on three instruments the department already owns: the spirometer, the chest radiograph with HRCT, and the tuberculosis register that the national programme obliges the unit to keep. That register is the single greatest advantage the specialty has, because treatment outcome is already recorded in a standard format, but it is also the commonest trap, since a patient decentralised to a peripheral unit disappears from your follow-up while remaining on the programme's books. Examiners press on spirometry quality, on whether bronchodilator reversibility was done to a stated protocol, and on how a patient was classified when the radiology and the physiology disagreed. Designs represented: Case-control, Cohort, Comparative interventional, Cross-sectional, Diagnostic accuracy, Prospective observational, Retrospective. ### MD Psychiatry — 44 topics https://mdthesis.com/thesis-topics/psychiatry A psychiatry thesis is built on instruments, so the work begins with choosing a scale that is validated for the question, obtaining permission where the copyright holder requires it, and using a translation that has itself been documented rather than produced on the morning of the first interview. Interviews take forty minutes to an hour each, which means the rate-limiting step is the candidate's own clinic time rather than the number of patients available, and a study needing a caregiver present halves the eligible pool again. Examiners press on who administered the scale and how they were trained, on whether the diagnosis was made with a structured interview or from the case file, and on what was done when a patient scored in a range that required action. Designs represented: Case-control, Cohort, Comparative interventional, Cross-sectional, Diagnostic accuracy, Prospective observational, Randomised controlled, Retrospective. ### MD Dermatology — 43 topics https://mdthesis.com/thesis-topics/dermatology Dermatology has the highest outpatient volume of any medical specialty, so recruitment is rarely the problem; the problem is that a high-volume OPD tempts a resident into a descriptive study of everything, which reads as a tally rather than a thesis. The department's own instruments decide what is possible: a dermatoscope, a Wood's lamp, a KOH bench, a patch test series and a cooperative histopathologist between them cover most good questions, and therapeutic comparisons are genuinely feasible here because the outcome is visible and measurable on the skin. Examiners press on whether severity was scored with a named instrument rather than an impression, on how photographs were standardised, and on whether the assessor of the outcome knew which treatment the patient received. Designs represented: Comparative interventional, Cross-sectional, Diagnostic accuracy, Prospective observational, Randomised controlled, Retrospective. ### MD Emergency Medicine — 44 topics https://mdthesis.com/thesis-topics/emergency-medicine The emergency department generates more eligible patients in a week than most departments see in a month, so the constraint is never recruitment; it is that consent, measurement and follow-up all have to happen in the middle of resuscitation, and anything requiring a calm conversation will be missed on the busiest nights. The usual design therefore rests on something recorded anyway, a triage category, a score, an ultrasound performed as part of care, or a time interval, and the single commonest failure is a study whose outcome depends on what happened after the patient left the department. Examiners press on who performed and interpreted a point-of-care scan, on whether time zero was defined before data collection began, and on how patients who left against advice or were referred elsewhere were handled. Designs represented: Case-control, Cohort, Cross-sectional, Diagnostic accuracy, Prospective observational, Randomised controlled, Retrospective. ### MS General Surgery — 46 topics https://mdthesis.com/thesis-topics/general-surgery Almost every general surgery thesis is built out of the emergency theatre register and the elective operating list, which means your sample accrues at the speed your unit actually operates. The commonest failure is a design that needs follow-up at six months in a population that does not return after suture removal, so decide early whether your primary outcome is measured before discharge or needs a clinic visit. Examiners press hardest on how the comparison arms were allocated, on who assessed the outcome, and on whether wound outcomes were scored against a stated definition rather than the operating surgeon's impression. Designs represented: Case-control, Cohort, Comparative interventional, Cross-sectional, Diagnostic accuracy, Prospective observational, Randomised controlled, Retrospective. ### MS Orthopaedics — 43 topics https://mdthesis.com/thesis-topics/orthopaedics An orthopaedic thesis is usually a functional outcome study, and its quality rests almost entirely on whether the right instrument was chosen for the joint and administered the same way every time. The data comes from trauma lists and the fracture clinic, so the constraint is rarely recruitment and almost always follow-up: a patient from two districts away who is walking comfortably will not return at six months unless someone telephones. Examiners press on the instrument, on who scored it, and on radiological union criteria, so write both definitions into the protocol rather than deciding them at the time of analysis. Designs represented: Case-control, Cohort, Comparative interventional, Cross-sectional, Diagnostic accuracy, Prospective observational, Randomised controlled, Retrospective. ### MS / MD Obstetrics & Gynaecology — 48 topics https://mdthesis.com/thesis-topics/obstetrics-gynaecology Obstetric data accrues faster than in any other surgical specialty because the labour room runs every day, which tempts residents into samples larger than they can follow up; the difficulty is almost always the neonatal or six-week endpoint rather than the enrolment. Gynaecology theses are slower and usually rest on the OPD, the ultrasound room and the histopathology report, so confirm that your pathology department will report endometrium to the classification you intend to use. Examiners press on gestational age dating, on how comparison groups were allocated in an induction or drug study, and on whether maternal and perinatal outcomes were defined before collection rather than counted afterwards. Designs represented: Case-control, Cohort, Comparative interventional, Cross-sectional, Diagnostic accuracy, Prospective observational, Randomised controlled, Retrospective. ### MS Ophthalmology — 45 topics https://mdthesis.com/thesis-topics/ophthalmology Ophthalmology is generous to the postgraduate because the outpatient clinic measures almost everything you need in a single sitting, and a cataract list supplies numbers no other surgical specialty can match. The real constraints are equipment-shaped: OCT, specular microscopy, automated perimetry and a non-mydriatic camera are not in every department, and a thesis built on a machine shared with another unit stalls when that machine goes down. Examiners press on how visual acuity and refraction were recorded, on who did them, and on whether the eye or the patient was treated as the unit of analysis. Designs represented: Case-control, Cohort, Comparative interventional, Cross-sectional, Diagnostic accuracy, Prospective observational, Randomised controlled, Retrospective. ### MS ENT (Otorhinolaryngology) — 44 topics https://mdthesis.com/thesis-topics/ent An ENT thesis usually lives between the outpatient clinic, the audiology room and the operating list, and the audiometer is the single piece of equipment that decides what is possible: if it is shared, uncalibrated or housed in a room with traffic noise outside, every hearing outcome you report is open to challenge. Graft uptake and hearing gain studies need a follow-up at three months that patients from outside the district rarely attend without a telephone call. Examiners press on calibration and the sound-treated room, on whether air-bone gap was averaged over stated frequencies, and on whether a symptom instrument such as SNOT-22 was used in a proper translation. Designs represented: Case-control, Cohort, Comparative interventional, Cross-sectional, Diagnostic accuracy, Prospective observational, Randomised controlled, Retrospective. ### MCh Urology — 42 topics https://mdthesis.com/thesis-topics/mch-urology An MCh dissertation is expected to be operative and quantitative, which in urology means stone-free rates, symptom scores and stricture recurrence measured against a stated imaging or endoscopic standard. The caseload is rarely the problem; the constraints are imaging at follow-up, consumables that the patient often pays for, and the fact that a man who is voiding well will not return for a flow rate. Examiners press on how stone-free status was defined and with what imaging, on whether symptom scores were self-completed in a proper translation, and on complications graded by a recognised system rather than described in prose. Designs represented: Case-control, Cohort, Comparative interventional, Cross-sectional, Diagnostic accuracy, Prospective observational, Randomised controlled, Retrospective. ### MD Radiodiagnosis — 45 topics https://mdthesis.com/thesis-topics/radiology A radiodiagnosis thesis is usually won or lost on the reference standard: an index test is only as good as the arthroscopy, histopathology, surgical finding or laboratory result you can actually obtain for every patient you scan. The data comes from the scanner log and the request register, so the real constraint is how many patients of the chosen type pass through in a year and how many of them go on to the confirmatory procedure in your own hospital. Examiners press hardest on verification bias, on whether the reporting radiologist was blinded, and on whether inter-observer agreement was measured when the index test is a subjective grading. Designs represented: Case-control, Cohort, Comparative interventional, Cross-sectional, Diagnostic accuracy, Prospective observational, Randomised controlled, Retrospective. ### MD Pathology — 44 topics https://mdthesis.com/thesis-topics/pathology A pathology thesis is built on specimens that arrive whether you are ready or not, so the first question is always how many of the lesion you care about the department received last year and whether the blocks and slides from that period can still be retrieved. Immunohistochemistry and special stains are the usual cost and supply bottleneck, and a study that needs four markers on a hundred and fifty blocks has to be costed and sanctioned before the synopsis, not after. Examiners press on grading reproducibility, on whether two observers read independently, and on whether the clinical correlation you claim came from the requisition slip or from the case file. Designs represented: Case-control, Comparative interventional, Cross-sectional, Diagnostic accuracy, Prospective observational, Randomised controlled, Retrospective. ### MD Microbiology — 44 topics https://mdthesis.com/thesis-topics/microbiology A microbiology thesis runs on isolates, and isolates come at the rate the hospital sends samples, so the feasibility question is how many of the organism you want the laboratory grew last year rather than how interesting the question is. Consumables decide the rest: a study needing E-test strips, a commercial identification panel or molecular work must be costed and sanctioned before the synopsis, and standard discs with CLSI interpretation will take you further than an exotic method that runs out in month three. Examiners press on quality control strains, on whether identification went beyond colony morphology, and on whether an infection you called hospital-acquired met a stated case definition rather than a clinical impression. Designs represented: Case-control, Cohort, Comparative interventional, Cross-sectional, Diagnostic accuracy, Prospective observational, Randomised controlled, Retrospective. ### MD Biochemistry — 42 topics https://mdthesis.com/thesis-topics/biochemistry A biochemistry thesis is limited by the analyser and the kit budget rather than by the number of patients, so the first thing to settle is which parameters the laboratory already runs on a funded reagent and which would need a purchase the department has not sanctioned. Samples usually come from patients being investigated anyway, which makes a waiver of consent for leftover sample work a reasonable request, but a study that draws an extra tube needs consent like any other. Examiners press on quality control and on the pre-analytical step: which analyser, which method principle, what the internal control showed on the day, and how the sample reached the laboratory. Designs represented: Case-control, Comparative interventional, Cross-sectional, Diagnostic accuracy, Prospective observational, Randomised controlled, Retrospective. ### MD Physiology — 44 topics https://mdthesis.com/thesis-topics/physiology A physiology thesis is usually done on volunteers rather than patients, which sounds easier and is not: recruitment, consent and a laboratory slot for every participant fall entirely on the resident, and a healthy-volunteer study needs ethics approval and written consent exactly like a clinical one. The equipment decides the question, so establish early what the department actually has working, whether it is the polygraph, a calibrated spirometer, a cycle ergometer or only a stopwatch and a sphygmomanometer. Examiners press on standardisation: time of day, posture, room temperature, the interval since the last meal or coffee, and whether the same person made every measurement. Designs represented: Case-control, Comparative interventional, Cross-sectional, Prospective observational, Randomised controlled, Retrospective. ### MD Anatomy — 44 topics https://mdthesis.com/thesis-topics/anatomy An anatomy thesis is decided by material: how many dry bones of the right type the department holds, how many cadavers come for dissection in an academic year, and whether foetal or placental specimens can be obtained with proper consent. Cadaveric and foetal work needs written departmental permission alongside institutional ethics clearance, and radiological anatomy on archived scans needs a waiver of consent from the committee rather than an assumption that old images are free to use. Examiners press on the definition of every landmark, on who measured and with what instrument, and on whether the same measurement repeated a week later gives the same number. Designs represented: Case-control, Comparative interventional, Cross-sectional, Diagnostic accuracy, Prospective observational, Randomised controlled, Retrospective. ### MD Forensic Medicine — 47 topics https://mdthesis.com/thesis-topics/forensic-medicine A forensic medicine thesis depends on material that belongs to an investigation rather than to the hospital, so permission is the first step: the authority that governs the mortuary must sanction the study in writing, alongside institutional ethics approval, and any additional sampling beyond the routine autopsy has to be justified specifically. The caseload of the centre decides everything else, since a district mortuary and a metropolitan one see entirely different patterns and volumes. Examiners press on whether you worked to a written proforma from the first case, on how cause of death was assigned, and on what you did about cases where the police papers and the autopsy findings did not agree. Designs represented: Case-control, Comparative interventional, Cross-sectional, Diagnostic accuracy, Prospective observational, Retrospective. ### MD Anaesthesiology — 47 topics https://mdthesis.com/thesis-topics/anaesthesiology Anaesthesiology is the one broad specialty where a randomised comparative trial is genuinely routine, because the comparison usually sits inside a single theatre session: two adjuvants, two airway devices, two block approaches, two analgesic regimens. That convenience carries an administrative cost — any prospective interventional study needs ethics approval and registration with the Clinical Trials Registry of India before the first participant is enrolled, and off-label or non-standard drug use draws questions from the committee. Examiners press hardest on blinding, on who recorded the outcome, and on whether the theatre list you assumed in your sample size actually ran for the whole collection period. Designs represented: Case-control, Cohort, Comparative interventional, Cross-sectional, Diagnostic accuracy, Prospective observational, Randomised controlled, Retrospective. ### MD Community Medicine — 44 topics https://mdthesis.com/thesis-topics/community-medicine A community medicine thesis is built on fieldwork, not equipment: a cross-sectional survey in the rural or urban field practice area, a knowledge and practice study in a school or workplace, an evaluation of a national programme as it is actually delivered, or a cluster-sampled coverage assessment. The constraint is almost never a machine — it is travel time, a field team you do not command, a local language instrument that has to be translated and pre-tested, and households that are empty when you call. Examiners press on the sampling frame and how you got to it, on whether the instrument was validated and pre-tested, and on how non-response was handled rather than ignored. Designs represented: Case-control, Cohort, Comparative interventional, Cross-sectional, Diagnostic accuracy, Randomised controlled, Retrospective. ### MD Pharmacology — 43 topics https://mdthesis.com/thesis-topics/pharmacology A pharmacology thesis in a medical college is usually clinical in its data even though the department is non-clinical: prescriptions collected from an outpatient department, adverse drug reactions captured through a pharmacovigilance centre, drug utilisation expressed in World Health Organization indicators or defined daily doses, and medicine cost or availability audited against the national essential medicines list. The recurring constraint is not equipment but access — you need a clinical department to let you stand in its clinic or read its case sheets, and that permission has to be secured in writing before the synopsis. Examiners press on whether your indicators were calculated exactly as defined, on who assigned causality and by which scale, and on how a prescription was sampled rather than simply collected. Designs represented: Case-control, Cohort, Comparative interventional, Cross-sectional, Diagnostic accuracy, Prospective observational, Randomised controlled, Retrospective. ### DM Cardiology — 44 topics https://mdthesis.com/thesis-topics/dm-cardiology A DM cardiology thesis sits on three data sources the department already generates every day: the catheterisation laboratory record, the echocardiography report and the procedural outcome follow-up. That makes recruitment easy and measurement hard, because the variables that matter — a lesion classification, an ejection fraction, a strain value — depend on who measured them and on which machine. A three-year super-specialty window is enough for a prospective cohort with a six-month or one-year endpoint, which is why most good cardiology dissertations are observational rather than randomised. Examiners press on reproducibility of the imaging measurement, on whether the angiographic reading was blinded, and on how completely follow-up was achieved. Designs represented: Cohort, Comparative interventional, Cross-sectional, Diagnostic accuracy, Prospective observational, Randomised controlled, Retrospective. ### DNB Ophthalmology — 45 topics https://mdthesis.com/thesis-topics/ophthalmology-dnb A DNB ophthalmology thesis is shaped by the NBEMS calendar more than by the subject: the protocol with ethics approval must be uploaded within 180 days of joining and the thesis submitted at 26 months, which leaves roughly a year to eighteen months of real collection and no room for a design that needs a second year of follow-up. That pushes the sensible choice towards cross-sectional clinic-based work, short-interval post-operative outcomes and diagnostic comparisons using instruments the department already owns. Examiners press on how visual acuity was recorded and converted for analysis, on which eye was used when both were eligible, and on whether the same observer took every measurement. Designs represented: Case-control, Cohort, Comparative interventional, Cross-sectional, Diagnostic accuracy, Prospective observational, Retrospective. ## University and board thesis formats What 19 universities and boards specify, at https://mdthesis.com/formats. Each statement on those pages is traced to the document it came from, and where a document could not be read the page says so rather than guessing. - Maharashtra University of Health Sciences, Nashik — https://mdthesis.com/formats/muhs - Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences, Karnataka — https://mdthesis.com/formats/rguhs - Kerala University of Health Sciences, Thrissur — https://mdthesis.com/formats/kuhs - The Tamil Nadu Dr. M.G.R. Medical University, Chennai — https://mdthesis.com/formats/tnmgrmu - Dr. NTR University of Health Sciences, Vijayawada — https://mdthesis.com/formats/ntruhs - Baba Farid University of Health Sciences, Faridkot — https://mdthesis.com/formats/bfuhs - West Bengal University of Health Sciences, Kolkata — https://mdthesis.com/formats/wbuhs - Kaloji Narayana Rao University of Health Sciences — https://mdthesis.com/formats/knruhs - Rajasthan University of Health Sciences, Jaipur — https://mdthesis.com/formats/ruhs - Atal Bihari Vajpayee Medical University, Uttar Pradesh, Lucknow — https://mdthesis.com/formats/abvmu - Madhya Pradesh Medical Science University, Jabalpur — https://mdthesis.com/formats/mpmsu - Gujarat University / Saurashtra University — https://mdthesis.com/formats/gujarat - Srimanta Sankaradeva University of Health Sciences, Guwahati — https://mdthesis.com/formats/ssuhs - Pandit Bhagwat Dayal Sharma University of Health Sciences, Rohtak — https://mdthesis.com/formats/uhsr - National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences, New Delhi — https://mdthesis.com/formats/nbems - All India Institute of Medical Sciences — https://mdthesis.com/formats/aiims - Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh — https://mdthesis.com/formats/pgimer - Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi — https://mdthesis.com/formats/bhu - Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh — https://mdthesis.com/formats/amu ## Glossary 60 terms used in a thesis protocol, defined plainly, at https://mdthesis.com/glossary. ## What a medical thesis costs At https://mdthesis.com/cost-of-a-medical-thesis: the unavoidable costs, the avoidable ones, and where the money is usually wasted. ## Index of pages - https://mdthesis.com/ — the practice in one page - https://mdthesis.com/pricing — the published schedule of fees and the instalment ledger - https://mdthesis.com/services — the service register - https://mdthesis.com/how-it-works — the stages, and the in-PDF review - https://mdthesis.com/doctors — the panel of mentors, writers and biostatisticians - https://mdthesis.com/technology — how MDSoftune works, and what it does not claim - https://mdthesis.com/about — the practice, its independence, and the ethics charter in full - https://mdthesis.com/contact — feasibility enquiries - https://mdthesis.com/thesis-topics — the topic bank, and https://mdthesis.com/thesis-topics/ for each cluster - https://mdthesis.com/formats — university and board thesis formats, and https://mdthesis.com/formats/ for each one - https://mdthesis.com/cost-of-a-medical-thesis — what a thesis costs, and where money is wasted - https://mdthesis.com/glossary — the terms used in a protocol - https://mdthesis.com/tools — free calculators: https://mdthesis.com/tools/sample-size and https://mdthesis.com/tools/dnb-deadlines - https://mdthesis.com/guides — the reference guides reproduced below - https://mdthesis.com/legal/terms · https://mdthesis.com/legal/privacy · https://mdthesis.com/legal/refund-policy - https://mdthesis.com/sitemap.xml · https://mdthesis.com/llms.txt # Guides ## NMC PGMER-2023 thesis rules explained for MD / MS residents URL: https://mdthesis.com/guides/nmc-pgmer-2023-thesis-rules-explained Published: 2026-08-12 What the 2023 Post Graduate Medical Education Regulations actually say about your thesis: marks, examiners, deadlines, research activity and what changed in 2024. The Post Graduate Medical Education Regulations 2023 (PGMER-2023) came into force on 1 January 2024 and reshaped how the postgraduate thesis is assessed. If you joined MD/MS in 2024 or later, these are the rules that govern you. ### Thesis is mandatory and carries marks Regulation 5.2(ii) keeps the thesis compulsory for every broad- and super-specialty postgraduate. It is now evaluated as part of the practical and viva examination and carries 20 marks, roughly 5% of your clinical assessment, judged by an external examiner from outside the state. ### Acceptance is no longer a gate to the exam NMC's clarifications of April, June and August 2024 confirmed that prior acceptance of the thesis is not a prerequisite to appear in the final examination. Submission still flows through your Head of Department and Dean, and universities still set their own internal deadlines, commonly six months before the exam. ### One research activity before finals Regulation 5.2(x) requires every postgraduate to complete at least one research activity, a poster or oral presentation at a state-level or higher conference or a first-author paper, along with a Research Methodology course, GCP training and e-logbook entries. ### Plagiarism thresholds NMC publishes no national percentage; universities follow the UGC 2018 convention of similarity below 10%, with a Turnitin, iThenticate, Drillbit or Urkund report attached to the submission. MDThesis ships an MDSoftune word-level uniqueness report with every draft, 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. - Start your synopsis in the first three months - Obtain Institutional Ethics Committee approval before collecting any data - Register prospective interventional studies on CTRI - Keep your e-logbook current; examiners ask --- ## How to write an MD / MS thesis synopsis, section by section URL: https://mdthesis.com/guides/how-to-write-md-thesis-synopsis Published: 2026-08-20 A section-by-section template for the postgraduate synopsis: title, introduction and need for the study, aims and objectives, methodology, sample size and references. Synopsis rejections usually trace to three places: an unfeasible topic, a vague objective and a sample size with no justification. Settle those three and most of what is left is structure and formatting, which is what the rest of this guide covers. ### 1. Title State the population, exposure or intervention, comparison and outcome. 'A prospective comparative study of X versus Y in patients with Z at a tertiary care centre' tells the committee everything. ### 2. Introduction and need for the study Two to three paragraphs: burden of the problem, what is known, the gap, and why your setting can answer it. Cite recent Indian data where it exists. ### 3. Aims and objectives One primary objective that maps to one outcome and one statistical test. Secondary objectives are fine but each should be measurable. ### 4. Methodology - Study design and setting - Study period (usually 18 months) - Inclusion and exclusion criteria - Sampling technique - Sample size with formula, assumed values and the reference they came from - Data collection tools and proforma - Statistical analysis plan naming the tests - Ethical considerations and consent ### 5. References Vancouver style, numbered in order of appearance, 15 to 25 references for a synopsis. --- ## Sample size calculation for an MD / MS thesis, explained without fear URL: https://mdthesis.com/guides/sample-size-calculation-md-thesis Published: 2026-08-28 The four formulas most postgraduate theses need, with worked examples and the values you are expected to justify. Sample size is the first question in most thesis vivas. You do not need to be a statistician; you need to know which of four situations you are in and where your assumed values came from. ### Estimating a prevalence n = Z²·p·(1−p)/d². With 95% confidence (Z = 1.96), an expected prevalence of 30% and absolute precision of 5%, n = 323. Cite the study your 30% came from. ### Comparing two means n per group = 2·(Zα + Zβ)²·σ²/Δ². Use a previous study for the standard deviation and a clinically meaningful difference for Δ, not the largest difference you can find. ### Comparing two proportions n per group = (Zα + Zβ)²·[p1(1−p1) + p2(1−p2)]/(p1 − p2)². State power (usually 80%) and alpha (5%) explicitly. ### Diagnostic accuracy Use the expected sensitivity (or specificity), the disease prevalence in your setting and the desired precision. Buderer's formula is the one usually cited for this design. - Always add 10% for attrition in prospective studies - Write the formula, the values, the source and the final number in the synopsis - If the department's patient load cannot reach the number, change the design or the duration, not the precision --- ## DNB / DrNB thesis timeline: the NBEMS deadlines you cannot miss URL: https://mdthesis.com/guides/dnb-thesis-submission-timeline Published: 2026-09-02 Protocol in 180 days, thesis by 26 months, cut-off dates, page limits, fees and what happens when assessors ask for modifications. NBEMS runs the tightest thesis calendar in Indian postgraduate medicine. Missing a date costs money or a six-month delay. - Protocol with Institutional Ethics Committee approval uploaded on the NBEMS portal within 180 days of joining - Data collection completed by 24 months - Thesis submitted by 26 months (27 months with a late fee) - Cut-off 30 June for the December exam, 31 December for the June exam - Maximum 80 pages, assessment fee applicable - Modified thesis within 6 weeks of assessor remarks - Bonafide declaration signed by trainee, guide and head of institution ### How MDThesis tracks this for you When you onboard as a DNB trainee we pre-load these milestones into your dashboard with your joining date, so every deadline shows a countdown and your doctor mentor is alerted ahead of time. --- ## How thesis similarity is measured, and reduced ethically URL: https://mdthesis.com/guides/reduce-plagiarism-below-10-percent Published: 2026-09-05 Why medical writing repeats standard phrasing, what counts as acceptable overlap under the UGC 2018 convention, and how a word-level check finds a risky passage while a chapter is still in draft. Medical writing reuses standard phrases: inclusion criteria, test names, drug dosages. That is why an honest thesis can still come back from its first similarity run well above the convention its university applies. ### What is acceptable Universities following UGC 2018 treat 0 to 10% as acceptable. Quoted definitions, reference lists and your own methodology in your own words are typically excluded. ### What not to do - Do not use paraphrasing tools that change meaning - Do not insert invisible characters or images of text - Do not buy pre-written chapters ### What works - Write methods from your own proforma, not from a paper - Summarise a study's finding, then cite it, rather than restating its sentence - Run a word-level check before every chapter is final, not once at the end MDSoftune, developed with REDENN Informatics Inc., Canada, checks every word and phrase of every draft and highlights risky passages with the likely source type, so they can be cited or rewritten while the chapter is still in draft. It is not the tool your university runs, and no figure it reports is a prediction of the figure your institution's own checker will produce. --- ## Choosing a thesis topic you can actually finish in 18 months URL: https://mdthesis.com/guides/choosing-a-feasible-thesis-topic Published: 2026-09-08 A feasibility checklist used by our senior doctor panel: patient load, ethics, cost, equipment, time and the novelty test. A brilliant topic you cannot complete is worse than an ordinary topic you can defend. Our doctor panel scores every candidate topic on six questions before we show it to you. - Patient load: can your department realistically enrol the sample size in 12 months? - Ethics: will the IEC approve it without a long back-and-forth? Is consent practical? - Cost: are any investigations outside routine care, and who pays? - Equipment: is the instrument or kit available, calibrated and in use in your hospital? - Time: does follow-up fit within your data-collection window? - Novelty: does it add something local or methodological that the last ten similar theses did not? ### Our process You receive three vetted options with a one-page feasibility note each, a pilot literature search and a rough sample size. You and your guide choose; we then build the synopsis around it. --- ## Writing the review of literature for a medical thesis URL: https://mdthesis.com/guides/review-of-literature-medical-thesis Published: 2026-09-11 What the chapter is for, how to search PubMed with MeSH terms and Boolean operators, how to read for the gap, and how to structure it from general to specific. The review of literature is often written last and should be drafted first. Its job is not to show that you have read widely. Its job is to make one gap so obvious that your research question reads as the only reasonable next sentence. ### What the chapter is actually for An examiner reading your review is asking one question: given everything already published, does this study need to exist? Everything in the chapter either answers that or is padding. A summary of forty studies answers nothing. A chapter showing that three groups have measured something in Western populations, two have measured it in India, none in the population you see in your outpatient department, and that the two Indian studies disagree, answers it in a paragraph. So write towards a gap you can state in one sentence before you write anything else. If you cannot state it, you are not ready to write the chapter; you are still reading. Say it out loud to your guide first. 'Nobody has looked at this in patients already on the standard drug' is a gap. 'More research is needed' is not. ### Searching PubMed properly The usual approach is to type a phrase into PubMed, take the first page of results and stop. PubMed accepts that, because it maps your free text onto its own indexing vocabulary automatically, but in doing so it has decided on your behalf what you meant and you never see what it discarded. The National Library of Medicine documents this as automatic term mapping. Getting control back means building the search yourself. Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) are the terms NLM indexers attach to each article. Look your concept up in the MeSH Database rather than guessing it, because the indexed heading is often not the word clinicians use at the bedside. A MeSH heading explodes by default when searched on PubMed, which means it also retrieves the narrower headings beneath it in the tree. For a thesis review that is usually what you want, occasionally far too much. Then build in concepts rather than sentences. One line per concept, synonyms joined by OR; concepts joined by AND; free-text spellings included alongside the MeSH heading, because an article indexed last week may not carry the heading yet. Field tags restrict where PubMed looks, [mh] for the MeSH heading and [tiab] for title and abstract. Note one trap: forcing a phrase with quotation marks, or truncating a word, switches automatic mapping off for that term, so quoting everything quietly narrows your search instead of tightening it. Keep the final search string. Paste it into your methods with the database, the date you ran it and the number of records it returned. It costs two lines and it is the cheapest way to show that your search was systematic rather than anecdotal. - Build one line per concept, then combine the lines with AND - Look every concept up in the MeSH Database instead of guessing the heading - Add free-text forms with [tiab] so recent, not-yet-indexed articles are not lost - Run the same concepts in Embase or Scopus if your institution subscribes, and check the Indian journals in your field directly, because PubMed does not index every one of them - Record the search string, the database, the date and the hit count ### Reading for the gap, not for the findings There is a difference between reading a paper and mining it. For a review of literature you are mining. For every study that survives your screen, record one row: design, setting and country, sample size, who was included, what was measured and how, the main result, and the column that does the real work, what it could not answer. That last column is your gap, assembled one study at a time. Do this in a spreadsheet from the first paper, not in your head and not in a folder of PDFs. Twenty rows of that table is a review of literature. Ninety unread PDFs is a weekend you will lose twice. Read the methods before the discussion. A discussion tells you what the authors wish they had shown. The methods tell you what they did, and the limitations they admit are usually the exact space your study occupies. ### Structure: general, then specific, then you Order the chapter as a funnel. Open with the condition and its burden, what it is, who it affects, why it matters clinically. Narrow to the specific aspect you are studying: the intervention, the marker, the technique, the scoring system. Then the evidence on that aspect. Then Indian and regional data specifically, and whether it agrees with the rest. Close with a short paragraph stating what remains unanswered and therefore what this study will do. Group by theme, never by author or by year. A chapter that runs 'one author found, then another found, then a third found' is a bibliography with paragraph breaks. A chapter that runs 'three hospital-based studies report higher values in this group, though all three recruited from tertiary centres' is a review. Studies are evidence for your argument, not the subject of it. The last paragraph of the review and the first paragraph of your aims should read as consecutive sentences. If they do not, one of the two is wrong. ### Cite while you write, never afterwards Citing at the end is how reference lists go wrong: numbers drift out of order, two papers merge into one, page ranges get typed from memory. Insert the citation in the same keystroke as the claim. Use a reference manager and let it renumber: Zotero is free and open source, and Mendeley has a free account tier. Vancouver style numbers references in order of first appearance, which is exactly the order a manager maintains and exactly the order manual editing destroys. Pull each reference from the source record rather than from another paper's reference list, because errors in reference lists propagate. And read what you cite. An examiner who opens one reference and finds it says something other than your sentence claims will open five more. ### How many references is reasonable There is no national rule. Neither the National Medical Commission nor the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences publishes a number, so any figure you are given is a local convention. Ask your department what its recently accepted theses looked like; that answer is worth more than any number here. Two real constraints do exist. The NBEMS thesis guidelines cap a DNB submission at 80 pages, which bounds the list whether you like it or not, and every reference has to be one you have actually read. The honest test is coverage rather than count. If a reader who knows the field could name a landmark paper you have not cited, you are short. If you have cited forty papers and could not say what six of them concluded, you are long. ### What makes an examiner mark it down - A chapter that summarises studies one by one and never states a gap - Textbook-level background with no primary literature behind it - No Indian or regional data, in a thesis conducted in an Indian hospital - Claims with no citation, or a citation that does not support the claim made - References out of Vancouver order, or listed in the bibliography but never cited in the text - Studies cited from secondary sources, with the original never opened - Silence on the one contradictory study the examiner happens to know - Heavy overlap with published prose, because the chapter was assembled from sources instead of written from an evidence table That last one solves itself if the chapter comes out of your own evidence table, because you are then describing your reading rather than reproducing it. --- ## Choosing the right statistical test for your thesis data URL: https://mdthesis.com/guides/choosing-the-right-statistical-test Published: 2026-09-11 A decision path for postgraduate data: how many groups, paired or independent, what kind of outcome, and whether it is normally distributed — plus what a p value means. Almost every statistical test a postgraduate thesis needs can be reached by answering four questions in order. Answer them about your primary objective before you look at any menu of tests, because the test follows from the design, and the design was fixed when you wrote your protocol. ### The four questions that decide it - What kind of outcome variable is it? Categorical (present or absent, grade I to IV) or numerical (a measurement)? - How many groups are being compared? One, two, or more than two? - Are the groups independent, or are the observations paired — the same patients measured twice, or matched pairs? - If the outcome is numerical, is it approximately normally distributed within each group? Write the four answers down for your primary objective. In most theses they select exactly one test, which means your statistical analysis section can name it instead of listing everything you might conceivably use. ### Categorical outcome: chi-square and Fisher's exact Comparing proportions between independent groups, a complication rate in group A against group B, is a chi-square test on a contingency table. The test relies on expected counts being large enough. The usual convention is to move to Fisher's exact test when an expected count in any cell falls below five, which happens constantly in thesis-sized tables. Fisher's exact is not the weaker option; it is the correct one for small counts, and every statistical package will compute it. Paired categorical data, the same patient before and after or two tests run on the same patient, is McNemar's test and not chi-square. This is an easy error to make because the table looks identical, and an easy one for a statistician to spot. Report counts and percentages alongside the p value. A percentage with no denominator is not a result. ### Numerical outcome, two groups Two independent groups with a normally distributed outcome: the unpaired, or independent samples, t test, and where the two groups' variances are clearly unequal the Welch version of it, which most packages offer and which costs nothing to prefer. The same patients measured twice, or matched pairs: the paired t test. Where the distribution is not normal, or the sample is too small to tell, the non-parametric equivalents are Mann-Whitney U for independent groups and Wilcoxon signed-rank for paired data. Non-parametric does not mean second best. It means you have not assumed a distribution you cannot demonstrate. With twenty patients an arm and a skewed outcome, and length of stay, duration of ventilation, cost and many biochemical markers are skewed, Mann-Whitney is the honest test, and an examiner who knows statistics will prefer it to a t test applied hopefully. Report median and interquartile range with it, not mean and standard deviation. ### More than two groups Three or more independent groups with a normal outcome: one-way ANOVA, followed, only if the ANOVA is significant, by a post hoc test to find which pairs differ. Tukey, Bonferroni and Scheffé are the ones software usually offers. For non-normal data: Kruskal-Wallis, with Dunn's test or Mann-Whitney plus a correction for the pairwise comparisons. Do not run three separate t tests across three groups. Each comparison carries its own chance of a false positive and running several multiplies it. That is precisely what the post hoc correction exists to handle, and skipping it is visible in the results table. Repeated measurements on the same patients at three or more time points need repeated-measures ANOVA, or the Friedman test if the outcome is not normal, rather than a series of paired tests. ### Normality: decide it, do not guess it Decide before analysis and on evidence. Shapiro-Wilk is the usual formal test at thesis sample sizes, with Kolmogorov-Smirnov also offered by most software, and both should be read next to a histogram and a Q-Q plot rather than instead of them. A significant Shapiro-Wilk result means the data depart from normality; a non-significant one in a small sample means only that you could not detect a departure. Then state it. 'Normality was assessed using the Shapiro-Wilk test; non-normally distributed variables were compared using the Mann-Whitney U test' is one sentence in your methods and it closes the question permanently. ### Correlation: Pearson or Spearman Pearson's correlation coefficient measures how closely two numerical variables follow a straight line, and it assumes both are roughly normal and the relationship is linear. Spearman's rank correlation works on ranks instead, and is the choice for ordinal data, skewed data, or a relationship that rises steadily without being straight. Two cautions that come up in vivas. Correlation is not agreement: if you are comparing two methods of measuring the same quantity, the Bland-Altman approach answers the question you actually have and a high correlation coefficient does not. And a correlation coefficient establishes neither direction nor cause, however large it is. ### Logistic regression, simple and multivariable When the outcome is binary, logistic regression estimates the effect of a predictor on the odds of that outcome and reports it as an odds ratio with a confidence interval. With one predictor it is simple logistic regression. Add further predictors and it becomes multivariable logistic regression, which estimates the effect of each one while holding the others constant, and that is usually the version a hospital study needs, because a difference between two groups of patients is rarely attributable to a single variable. Both are well within reach of a postgraduate thesis. Two practical limits. You need enough outcome events to support the number of predictors you include; a widely quoted rule of thumb is of the order of ten events per predictor, and it is a rule of thumb rather than a regulation. And the variables you adjust for should come from clinical reasoning written down in advance, not from feeding everything in and keeping whatever emerged significant. Report the odds ratio, its confidence interval and the reference category, because an odds ratio with no stated reference category cannot be read. ### What a p value is, and what it is not A p value is the probability of obtaining a result at least as extreme as the one you observed, if the null hypothesis were true. That is the whole of it. It is not the probability that the null hypothesis is true, not the probability that your finding is real, and not a measure of how large or how clinically important an effect is. It follows that 0.04 and 0.06 are not different in kind, and that 0.05 is a convention rather than a boundary in nature. A very large study can return a tiny p value for a difference too small to change any management decision. A small study can miss a real and important difference and return a non-significant p. 'Not significant' means you did not demonstrate a difference, not that there is none. ### Why confidence intervals belong in the results A confidence interval reports the effect and its precision together: how big the difference was, and how much uncertainty surrounds it. That is the clinically useful statement, and it is the one a p value cannot make. A mean difference of four units with a 95% confidence interval from one to seven tells a reader something. A p value of 0.01 tells them only that something happened. Give the estimate, its interval and the p value for every primary and secondary outcome, and give exact p values rather than 'p < 0.05' wherever your software prints them. Round sensibly: two decimals for most measurements, three for a p value, and never more digits than your instrument could measure. ### Before you run anything - Name your tests in the protocol, not after you have seen the data - One primary objective, one outcome, one primary test; everything else is secondary and says so - Check your master chart codes and units before analysis rather than during it - Keep the output file your software produced, not only the numbers you copied out of it - If the design needs survival analysis, a multivariable model, or a sample size you cannot justify, involve a statistician at protocol stage MDThesis puts a biostatistician on the analysis and on the analysis plan inside the protocol, which is the cheaper of the two places to involve one. --- ## The Institutional Ethics Committee packet, document by document URL: https://mdthesis.com/guides/ethics-committee-submission-packet Published: 2026-09-11 Every document an IEC submission needs, what committees send back and why, consent for vulnerable groups, waiver for record-based studies, and data confidentiality. No data may be collected before the Institutional Ethics Committee has approved the study. The Indian Council of Medical Research's National Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical and Health Research Involving Human Participants (2017) is the reference Indian committees work from, and a dataset collected first is not rescued by a letter dated later. The practical consequence is that the ethics packet is where your thesis really begins, and a thesis that runs late has often lost the time to a packet that went round twice. ### What goes in the packet Your committee publishes its own checklist and states how many copies it wants, and that list governs everything below. Most Indian ethics committees ask for some version of the following. - A covering letter and the committee's own application form, signed - The full protocol: background, objectives, design, setting, inclusion and exclusion criteria, sampling technique, sample size with its formula and source, intervention or exposure, outcome definitions, the statistical analysis plan and the study period - The participant information sheet, in plain language - The informed consent form, in English and in the language your participants actually speak, with a translation certificate - An assent form where minors are involved - The case record form or proforma you will fill for each participant - Curriculum vitae for the investigator, the guide and any co-investigators - The investigator's undertaking, signed - The guide's approval and the Head of Department's forwarding - Good Clinical Practice or research ethics training certificates, where your committee requires them - A declaration of funding and of conflicts of interest, including any kit, drug or device being supplied to you - Any questionnaire or scale you intend to use, with the author's permission where it is not free to use Read the protocol and the proforma side by side before you submit them, because the committee will. It checks whether every variable in the proforma is justified by an objective, and whether every outcome in the objectives is actually captured by the proforma. That mismatch is among the easiest objections for a member to raise and among the cheapest to prevent. ### The information sheet and the consent form These are two documents, not one, and committees treat them differently. The information sheet explains the study to the participant. The consent form records the decision. ICMR's 2017 guidelines set out what the information has to cover: the purpose and the procedures, how long participation lasts, what will be done with the data, the foreseeable risks, discomfort or inconvenience, any benefits, what happens if the participant is injured in the course of the research, how confidentiality will be maintained, that participation is voluntary and may be withdrawn without any effect on their treatment, and whom to contact with a question. Write it to be read aloud. A sheet written at the reading level of your protocol is the document most reliably sent back. Short sentences, no abbreviation unexpanded, no word a patient would have to ask about, and a phone number that is answered. If the study offers the participant no benefit, say so plainly; a sheet that hints at better treatment for joining is worse than a blunt one. The consent form has to exist in the language your participants speak, and your committee will normally want a certificate from the translator and sometimes a back-translation. Do not produce the translation yourself the night before submission. Prepare as many languages as your setting genuinely needs. For a participant who cannot read, a thumb impression with an impartial witness is the recognised route, and your committee will specify who may act as that witness. ### Vulnerable participants ICMR's guidelines treat some groups as needing additional safeguards because their ability to consent freely is constrained: children, people with cognitive impairment or mental illness, the unconscious and the critically ill, pregnant women, prisoners, and people whose economic or social position makes refusal feel costly. The committee will ask what your safeguards are, and will not accept their absence. For children, consent is taken from a parent or guardian, and the guidelines also require the child's own assent, written or verbal, between the ages of seven and eighteen, in language the child understands. Assent is not a formality. A child's refusal means something, and the protocol should say what you will do when it is given. Where your participants are your own patients, the committee will want to know who takes consent, because a treating doctor asking for consent carries an implicit pressure on the person asked. Naming a co-investigator who is not involved in that patient's care is a small change that answers a large objection. ### Waiver of consent for record-based studies A retrospective study of case records cannot obtain consent from patients discharged two years ago, and ICMR's guidelines allow an ethics committee to waive consent where the research carries less than minimal risk and the waiver does not adversely affect the rights and welfare of the participants. Record-based research is the usual example. The waiver, though, is the committee's decision and not yours: you request it, with reasons, and you wait for it. Ask for it explicitly in the application. State why consent is impracticable, describe exactly which records you will access and through whom, and describe how identifiers will be stripped at the point of extraction. A waiver of consent is not a waiver of confidentiality, and it does not extend to contacting those patients afterwards. If you intend to telephone them for follow-up, that is a different study with consent inside it. ### Confidentiality and data handling Put a paragraph in the protocol that a committee member can tick off. Every participant receives a study number. Names, hospital registration numbers, addresses and phone numbers do not enter the master chart. Where you need a link between study number and patient, and in a prospective study you usually do, it lives in one separate file held by the investigator, and the protocol says where it is kept and for how long. Say who has access, where the file is stored, whether it is password protected and what happens to it at the end. ICMR's 2017 guidelines set minimum periods for which study records are preserved after a study ends: at least three years for biomedical and health research, and at least five years for regulatory clinical trials. Institutions and sponsors often require longer, so confirm the period your own committee applies before you write a number into the protocol. Photographs, operative images, radiographs and anything carrying a patient's face or name need separate explicit consent for use in the thesis or in any publication, and the consent form should carry that clause if you intend to use them. ### What committees actually send back - An information sheet written in technical language, or with no contact number on it - No local-language consent form, or no translation certificate - A proforma collecting variables no objective asks for, or collecting the patient's name - Objectives that do not match the outcomes described in the methods - A sample size with no formula, no assumed values and no cited source for them - No statement of who will take consent, where the treating doctor is the investigator - No safeguards stated where children or critically ill patients are to be included - A waiver of consent assumed rather than requested - Nothing on compensation or on management of research-related injury, in an interventional study - No plan for incidental findings: what you will do when a test you ran for the study reveals something the patient needs treated - A prospective interventional study with no mention of trial registration Every one of those is fixable in an afternoon before submission and costs a full committee cycle afterwards. Read your own packet once as the member who would have to raise the objection. --- ## CTRI registration for a thesis: when it is needed and how to do it URL: https://mdthesis.com/guides/ctri-registration-for-thesis Published: 2026-09-11 What CTRI is, why a prospective interventional study must be registered before you enrol the first participant, and why submissions get queried and sent back. If your thesis is a prospective interventional study, it must be registered with the Clinical Trials Registry - India before you enrol your first participant. Not before you submit the thesis, not before you publish: before the first participant. That sentence is the whole of this guide's practical content. The rest is how to satisfy it without losing a month. ### What CTRI is CTRI is India's national clinical trial register, run by the Indian Council of Medical Research and hosted by its National Institute for Research in Digital Health, the institute previously called the National Institute of Medical Statistics. The registry's own pages describe it as a free, online, public record system, and state that there is no fee for registering a trial. Registration has been mandatory for clinical trials since 15 June 2009, when the Drugs Controller General (India) required it, and the registry sits inside a wider framework: ICMR's 2017 national ethical guidelines require registration, the New Drugs and Clinical Trials Rules, 2019 govern regulatory trials, and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors treats prospective registration in a public registry as a condition of considering a trial for publication. That last one is why registration matters even for a thesis you only intend to publish later. A completed registration produces a public record and a CTRI number. That number goes into your thesis, into the methods of any paper that comes out of it, and into your ethics file. ### Prospective means prospective CTRI registers studies prospectively. Its own frequently asked questions state that since 1 April 2018 it registers trials only prospectively, meaning before the first patient is enrolled, and the declaration a registrant signs confirms that no participant has been enrolled before registration. The registry also states that retrospective registration, or registration based on invalid or falsified documentation, is a serious breach that will freeze the registrant's account and may be reported to the appropriate authorities. The consequence for a thesis calendar is simple and routinely missed. Ethics approval comes first, because CTRI requires the approval letter. Registration comes second. Only then does the first patient enter the study. If you have already started recruiting there is no correct way to repair it, and you will be explaining it in your viva and again to a journal editor. Review at the registry is not instantaneous either. The registry puts its first review at ten working days from submission, after which the study goes back to the registrant for clarifications or modifications, and the clock from there depends on how fast you answer them. Build several weeks into the plan, not several days. ### Which thesis studies need it Interventional and prospective: register. A randomised controlled trial, any comparison of two treatments or techniques that you assign, a drug or device study, a surgical or anaesthetic technique comparison, a physiotherapy or lifestyle intervention, a screening or diagnostic pathway you are introducing. All interventional. Purely observational: registration is not mandatory, but CTRI accepts observational studies, and the registry repeats the World Health Organization's advice, when in doubt, register. A cross-sectional prevalence study, a case-control study and a record-based retrospective review are not trials, though the registry's own answer is that even a study collecting data retrospectively should be registered before data collection starts, so if you decide to register one the same deadline logic applies. A prospective cohort in which you do nothing to the patients is observational, but look again if you are adding an investigation the patient would not otherwise have had, because you may have acquired an intervention. The registry's own declaration says that clinical studies carried out as part of a postgraduate thesis are expected to be registered, and registering an observational study is cheap insurance: some journals and some universities ask for a registration number, and you cannot obtain one retrospectively. If you are unsure which side of the line your study falls on, ask your ethics committee in writing and keep the reply. Committees answer this question constantly. ### What the form asks for Most of the form is your protocol retyped into fields. If the protocol is finished, registration is an evening's work. If it is not, the form will find every gap. - A public title in lay language, and a scientific title - The principal investigator and the site's contact details - Sponsor, which for a thesis is usually your institution or is self-funded, stated as such - Every recruitment site, with the ethics committee that approved each one - The health condition studied, coded as the registry asks - The intervention and the comparator, with dose, route and duration where applicable - Inclusion and exclusion criteria as written in the approved protocol - How the allocation sequence is generated and concealed, and the blinding - Primary and secondary outcomes, each with the time point at which it is measured - Target sample size, and the dates enrolment is expected to open and close - Study design and, where applicable, phase - The ethics committee approval letter, uploaded, plus regulatory clearance where the study requires one Contact persons named on the form are asked to confirm by email, so use addresses that are live and monitored. A co-investigator's dead email account stalls a submission for days. ### Why submissions get queried - Enrolment has already begun, which cannot be corrected - The ethics approval letter is missing, unsigned, undated, or carries a different title from the form - Title, objectives or sample size on the form do not match the approved protocol - Outcomes stated with no time point, or a primary outcome that is really three outcomes - A public title written in technical language - A multi-centre study with only one site's ethics approval uploaded - Source of monetary or material support left blank - An unconfirmed contact email address - An intervention described too vaguely for anyone to reproduce Answer a query by changing the form to match the approved protocol, never by changing the protocol to match the form. If something in the study genuinely has to change, that is an amendment to your ethics committee first and a correction to the registry afterwards. ### Check the current guidance, every time CTRI's requirements, its dataset and its reading of what must be registered have changed more than once and will change again. Nothing here replaces the registry's own current instructions at ctri.nic.in, your ethics committee's direction, or, for DNB and DrNB trainees, the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences' requirement that the ethics-approved protocol be uploaded within 180 days of joining. Check all three against your own dates before you rely on any of them. --- ## Designing your master chart before you collect any data URL: https://mdthesis.com/guides/master-chart-and-data-cleaning Published: 2026-09-11 One row per participant, one column per variable: coding conventions, missing data, date formats, version control, and getting the file ready for SPSS or R. The master chart is the spreadsheet that holds your study. Everything downstream, every table, every test, every number in your results, is read out of it. Design it in the week you write your protocol, before a single patient is enrolled, because a chart designed after collection has to be rebuilt from case sheets, and that rebuild is measured in weeks rather than evenings. ### One row per participant, one column per variable That is the entire structure, and most broken charts break it. One row is one participant. One column is one thing you measured about them. The first row of the sheet holds variable names and nothing else: no title, no merged heading, no department name, no blank spacer row. Things that look convenient and are not: a column called 'Investigations' holding several results in one cell; a column called 'Comorbidities' holding a comma-separated list; two rows for one patient because they were measured twice. Free text in a cell cannot be analysed. It has to be read by a human and retyped, which is exactly the rebuild you were trying to avoid. Split it. Haemoglobin is its own column. Diabetes is its own column holding 0 or 1. Repeated measurements are where the decision matters most. Measuring blood pressure at baseline, one month and three months can be three columns across one row, or three rows per patient with a column saying which visit it is. SPSS wants the first arrangement for a paired test and the second for some models; R handles both. Pick one when you write the protocol and tell your statistician which you chose. ### Coding conventions, written down first Write a codebook on the second sheet of the same file before you enter the first patient. One line per variable: the exact column name, what it means, its unit, and for a categorical variable every permitted code and its meaning. Without it, a 3 sitting in a column called grade is unreadable six months later. With it, a statistician who has never met you can analyse your data unaided. - Lower case column names, no spaces, no punctuation beyond the underscore: age_years, hb_gdl, los_days - Put the unit in the column name and never in the cell, because a cell reading 120 mmHg turns the whole column into text - Binary variables as 0 and 1, with 1 meaning the thing is present; never Yes in one row and Y in the next - Code each category as a documented number, or as one consistent spelling, but never both in the same column - Keep ordered categories in their real order, 1 to 4 for grade I to IV, so a rank-based test behaves correctly - Never colour a cell to mean something. Colour is not data, it does not survive an export, and no software reads it ### No identifier, ever No name, no hospital registration number, no address, no telephone number, no Aadhaar number, no date of birth, no photograph goes into the master chart. Each participant gets a study number, 001 and onwards, and that is their identity in the file for the rest of the study. Age goes in the chart; date of birth does not. In a prospective study you will need a route back to the patient, for a follow-up visit or a missing report. Keep that link in one separate file that never travels with the analysis file: study number against hospital number, nothing else, held by you, stored the way your ethics committee's approved plan says. The master chart can then be emailed to a statistician, opened on a shared computer and printed into your thesis appendix without exposing anybody. This is not only good practice. Confidentiality of participant data is a requirement of ICMR's 2017 national ethical guidelines, which your ethics committee works from, and you have already told that committee in writing how you would achieve it. Names left in the chart are the quiet breach of your own undertaking. ### Dates Store dates as YYYY-MM-DD and in no other format. It sorts correctly even as text, it is unambiguous in a way that 03/04/2026 is not, and it survives the move between software. Decide once whether a column holds true date values or text, and do not mix the two inside one column. Spreadsheets interfere with anything that looks like a date. Type a value that resembles one and the spreadsheet will convert it silently, so format columns of codes, ratios and gene-like labels as text before you type into them, and inspect a column after every import. In most cases what you actually want is not a date at all but a number: keep date of admission and date of discharge if you need them, and also compute and store los_days, because that is the variable you will analyse. ### Missing data, honestly Data will be missing. A report was never collected, a patient did not return, a question was skipped. The dishonest options are filling the gap with a guess, with the group mean, or with a zero. Leave the cell genuinely empty, or use one consistent marker such as NA, declared in your codebook and in your software's missing-value settings. Never use 0, 9, 99 or 999. A sentinel number is invisible to the software and gets averaged into your results as a real value, which is how a paediatric series acquires a mean age in the nineties. Distinguish missing from absent, because they are different facts. A blank under 'duration of ventilation' for a patient who was never ventilated is not missing data; it is a zero, or better, a separate variable recording whether they were ventilated at all. Confusing the two changes your denominator and therefore every percentage built on it. Then report it. State how many values were missing for each variable that matters and what you did about them. A results section that declares its missingness is believed. One that implies a complete dataset from 120 consecutive emergency admissions is not. ### Raw variables and derived variables Store what you measured. Compute what follows from it. Height and weight belong in the chart; BMI is calculated by your software from those two columns and is not typed in by hand. The same goes for length of stay from two dates, for mean arterial pressure, for a score that sums several items, and for change from baseline. A typed derived value is a transcription error waiting to surface in your viva, and it cannot be rechecked because the working is not in the file. Name derived columns clearly and keep them to the right of the raw data, then regenerate them rather than editing them. When a raw value is corrected, the derived value corrects itself. ### One file, with versions One file is the master. It lives in a folder that syncs to cloud storage and it carries a date in its filename: master_chart_2026-09-19.xlsx. When you make a substantial change, save a new dated copy instead of overwriting, because at some point you will need to know what a value looked like before you cleaned it. Never put the word final in a filename. Do not edit the master chart while a statistician is analysing a copy of it. You will end up with two divergent files and no way to tell which one produced your tables. Send a dated copy, keep collecting in the master, and send an updated dated copy when collection closes. ### Getting it ready for SPSS or R - One sheet of data, starting at cell A1, variable names in row 1, the first participant in row 2 - No merged cells, no blank rows or columns, no subtotal or total row, no notes underneath the data - No asterisks, footnote marks or comments inside data cells - Numeric columns containing only numbers: no 'approx', no '<5', no trailing spaces - One consistent spelling for every category; sort the column and read its unique values before you trust it - Export a copy as CSV and reopen it, because anything that looks wrong there is what your software will see - Check the obvious: does every row have a study number, are any study numbers duplicated, is any age 2 or 200, is any discharge date earlier than its admission date Half an hour on that checklist is the difference between an analysis that starts today and one that starts after four rounds of questions. If you would rather hand over a designed chart than build one, MDThesis sets it up with its codebook from your approved proforma at protocol stage, which is the point at which the work is an hour rather than a rebuild. --- ## Sampling methods for a medical thesis, described honestly URL: https://mdthesis.com/guides/sampling-methods-for-medical-thesis Published: 2026-09-11 Simple random, systematic, stratified, cluster, consecutive and purposive sampling: which are honest in a hospital study, and how sampling changes your sample size. 'Simple random sampling' is the phrase that turns up in sampling sections where no sampling frame ever existed. It is easy for an examiner to find, because the rest of the methods usually contradicts it, and it is entirely avoidable: an accurate description of what you actually did is almost always acceptable, and the inaccurate one is not. ### Probability sampling In probability sampling every member of the population has a known, non-zero chance of being selected. That is what lets a sample stand for a population, and it is what the standard sample size formulas assume you are doing. Simple random sampling needs a sampling frame, a numbered list of the whole eligible population, from which you draw at random using a random number generator or table. The frame is the requirement. If you cannot produce that list before you start sampling, you are not doing simple random sampling, and in a hospital-based prospective study where patients will arrive over the next eighteen months no such list can exist. Systematic sampling works from the same frame: a random starting point, then every kth record, where k is the frame size divided by the sample size you need. This is honest and practical for record-based studies, where the frame genuinely exists, because every admission in the last three years is a list you can number. Watch for periodicity: if the list repeats a pattern, one unit's cases always falling on the same day, a fixed interval can lock onto it. Stratified random sampling divides the population into strata that matter, sex, age band, disease severity, urban and rural, then samples at random within each. It needs a frame and it needs the strata known in advance. The payoff is precision and a guarantee that small groups appear at all. The cost is that the analysis must respect the strata, and that proportionate and disproportionate allocation are different decisions which have to be stated. Cluster sampling samples groups rather than individuals, wards, villages, schools, anganwadi centres, and studies everyone or a random sample within each selected cluster. It is the right design for community-based work where no individual frame exists. It also carries a statistical cost, which is below. ### Non-probability sampling Consecutive sampling enrols every eligible patient who presents, in order, until the sample size is reached or the study period closes. It is what a hospital-based prospective study can actually do, and it is a recognised and defensible method. Say it. 'All consecutive patients meeting the inclusion criteria and attending the department between these two dates were enrolled' is a complete and accurate sampling statement, and it is far stronger than a random-sampling claim that collapses under one question. Convenience sampling takes whoever is available and willing, without enrolling consecutively: whoever is in the ward when you do your round, whoever agrees. There is no shame in the phrase and a great deal of harm in disguising it. Write it, then do the two things that make it defensible. State specifically how those participants came to be the available ones, and discuss in your limitations what that selection is likely to have done to your results. An examiner accepts a stated limitation and pursues a hidden one. Purposive sampling selects participants deliberately because of a characteristic you need. It is the correct and intended method for qualitative work and for some diagnostic studies, where information-rich cases matter more than a representative cross-section. It is a design choice and should be justified as one, not apologised for. Quota sampling sits next to convenience sampling: you fill predetermined numbers in each category by whatever means come to hand, with no randomisation inside the categories. In a table it looks like stratified sampling and it is not, and calling it stratified is the misdescription most likely to be caught. Snowball sampling, where participants recruit other participants, belongs to hard-to-reach populations and carries its own biases, which you state rather than hope nobody raises. ### What usually gets misdescribed - 'Simple random sampling' written where no sampling frame existed: consecutive sampling is the honest replacement - 'Random' used to mean arbitrary or haphazard, when it has a technical meaning, a defined chance of selection - 'Stratified' written where quotas were filled without randomisation inside each stratum - 'Randomly allocated' confused with 'randomly sampled': allocation to groups after enrolment is a different act from selection out of a population, and a randomised trial commonly samples consecutively and allocates at random - A sampling method named with no study period, setting or eligibility criteria alongside it, so a reader cannot tell who was available to be sampled in the first place All five are repaired by describing what happened. The objection is to the claim, not to the method. ### How sampling interacts with the sample size calculation The standard formulas, for estimating a prevalence and for comparing two means or two proportions, assume simple random sampling. Any other design modifies the number they give you. Cluster sampling inflates it. Because people within a cluster resemble one another, each extra person from the same cluster adds less information than an independent person would, so the required sample size is multiplied by a design effect to compensate. The design effect depends on how alike observations within a cluster are and on how many you take per cluster, and it has to be stated and justified rather than assumed. A community study using a cluster design and an unadjusted sample size is under-powered by construction. Stratified sampling can reduce it, where the strata really are more homogeneous than the population as a whole, and the calculation is then done stratum by stratum. Consecutive sampling leaves the formula alone but changes what the number means. You calculated n for a representative sample; what you will have is every eligible patient from one department over a fixed period. Report the number, and acknowledge in your limitations that the population sampled is your hospital's. Run the arithmetic in the other direction too, before the protocol goes in. If your department sees a certain number of eligible patients a month and your calculated n is well beyond what the data-collection window can deliver, the design has to change: a longer period, wider inclusion criteria, a second site, or a different question. Loosening the precision or the power until the number fits is the one move that cannot be defended, and it is the first thing a statistician on the panel looks for. Our free sample size calculator at /tools/sample-size covers the designs a thesis usually needs and shows the formula and the assumed values next to the answer, so the working can go into the synopsis instead of a bare number. ### Writing the section - Name the design: prospective observational, cross-sectional, record-based retrospective, randomised - Name the setting and the exact dates of the study period - Give the inclusion and exclusion criteria that define eligibility - Name the sampling technique accurately, in one sentence that matches what you did - For a probability method, state what the sampling frame was and how randomisation was performed - For consecutive or convenience sampling, say so, and carry it through to your limitations - Keep the sample size calculation in its own paragraph, with the formula, the assumed values, the source of those values and the final number A reader should be able to say, from that paragraph alone, exactly who could have entered your study and how they were chosen. When they can, the section is finished. --- ## Writing the discussion chapter without repeating your results URL: https://mdthesis.com/guides/writing-the-discussion-chapter Published: 2026-09-11 The structure that works: principal finding, comparison with the literature, mechanism, honest limitations and what follows, and how to stop repeating your results. Examiners read the discussion to find out whether you understood your own study. It is the one chapter where you are allowed to think out loud, and it is the chapter most often sent back, because it is written as a second results chapter with the numbers spelled out in words. ### What the discussion is for Results answer what happened. The discussion answers five different questions: what your main finding means, whether anybody else found the same thing, why it might be so, what could have distorted it, and what should happen next. Those five questions are the chapter. If a paragraph answers none of them, it belongs in the results, the introduction or the review of literature. ### Open with the principal finding, once The first paragraph states the single most important thing you found, in words, without the table. Give direction and magnitude rather than a p value: mean fasting glucose fell by this much more in one arm than the other, or the proportion with the complication was this against that. Then one sentence on what that means for a patient or a clinician. Do not begin with a restatement of the aims, and do not begin with a definition of the disease. Your examiner has read the first chapter. Opening a discussion with throat-clearing wastes the strongest position in it. ### Put your finding next to the literature, not after it The commonest weak structure is a run of paragraphs, each summarising one previous study, with your own result nowhere in sight until the end. Invert it. Lead every paragraph with your own finding, then bring in the studies that agree and the studies that do not. The unit of the discussion is your result, and published work is the evidence you argue with, not the subject of the chapter. Disagreement is more useful than agreement, and it is where the chapter earns its marks. When your result differs from a published one, give a reason you can defend in the viva: a different population, a different definition of the outcome, a different assay or cut-off, a different duration of follow-up, a hospital-based sample against a community one, a different era of treatment. The sentence that a difference may be due to methodological differences is not a reason. It is a way of avoiding one, and an examiner reads it as exactly that. ### Offer a mechanism, and mark it as a proposal After the comparison, say why your result is biologically or clinically plausible. One paragraph is enough, and the language must stay conditional: may, could, one explanation is. An observational design cannot establish causation, so a discussion that starts by reporting an association and ends by asserting an effect has quietly overstated the study. That slide is easy for an examiner to spot and hard to defend once it is on the page. ### Limitations, written without dismantling your own work Two opposite failures are common. The first is the one-line dismissal, usually that the only limitation was a small sample size, which tells the examiner you have not thought about bias at all. The second is the confession, three pages of everything that could conceivably be wrong, which leaves the reader unsure why the conclusion should be believed. The form that works is three parts, one sentence each: name the limitation, say in which direction it could have pushed your result, and say what you did to contain it or why it does not overturn the conclusion. Written that way, a limitation demonstrates control of the method rather than weakness in it. - Single centre, so the findings describe patients reaching a tertiary referral hospital and may overstate severity; the setting is therefore reported in full and the conclusion is stated for that setting. - The sample size was calculated for the primary outcome, so the secondary comparisons are exploratory and are reported as such rather than as findings. - The outcome was assessed by the treating clinician, which risks observer bias; a fixed written definition and a single proforma were used to limit it. - Follow-up ended at six weeks, which cannot capture late recurrence, and no recurrence rate is claimed for that reason. Never write that a limitation does not affect the results. If it truly does not, it is not a limitation. Say how much it could affect them, and in which direction. ### End with what follows Two short paragraphs close the chapter. The first says what the study adds that was not already known, in one sentence, without inflating it. The second says what the next study should do differently, specifically enough that another resident could take it up as a topic: a multicentre sample, a longer follow-up window, a randomised allocation, an objective endpoint in place of a clinical impression. The phrase further studies are needed, unattached to any detail of what those studies should change, adds nothing and is noticed. ### A test for repetition you can run in twenty minutes Print the results and the discussion and lay them side by side. Mark every number that appears in both. A number earns its place in the discussion only if the sentence around it interprets or compares it. If the sentence could be moved back into the results chapter without losing anything, move it. This one pass cuts a first draft noticeably, and what remains reads as argument rather than recital. ### Length and proportion Most departments do not prescribe a length for the discussion, but some do, so confirm with yours before you plan it. As a working proportion, a discussion usually runs a little longer than the results and shorter than the review of literature. If it has become the longest chapter in the thesis, it is probably reviewing the literature a second time. ### Before you hand the draft to your guide - The first paragraph states one finding, with direction and magnitude, and no aims. - Every comparison paragraph starts with your result, not with somebody else's study. - Each disagreement with published work has a named, concrete reason. - Causal verbs appear only if the design supports them. - Limitations are specific, directional and contained, and none is described as not affecting the results. - The closing recommendation names what should change in the next study. - Every reference cited in the discussion is one you have actually read. --- ## Vancouver referencing for a medical thesis, done properly URL: https://mdthesis.com/guides/vancouver-referencing-for-medical-thesis Published: 2026-09-11 Numbering in order of first appearance, the formats for an article, book, chapter, web page and thesis, the six-author rule, and using a reference manager safely. Referencing is the cheapest part of a thesis to get right and one of the easiest places to lose marks. An examiner who finds three citations that do not match the sentences they are attached to will start checking the rest, and a reference list that cannot be trusted makes a reader wonder about the table on page 40 that nobody can verify. ### What Vancouver is Vancouver is a numbered citation style used by most medical journals and by most Indian health universities for the postgraduate thesis. A number in the text points to one entry in a list at the end, and that list sits in the order the numbers first appear rather than alphabetically. The name is historical: a small group of general medical journal editors met in Vancouver in 1978 and agreed a common format for the manuscripts they received, and that group grew into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, which publishes its own account of that history. The convention is carried forward today in the Committee's recommendations on the conduct, reporting, editing and publication of scholarly work, which send authors to the detailed reference formats maintained by the United States National Library of Medicine. Whether your number goes in superscript, in round brackets or in square brackets, and whether it sits before or after the full stop, is set by your university's template. There is no single correct answer, and marks are lost for inconsistency rather than for choosing one form over another. Find the template before you write the first citation. ### Numbering in order of first appearance The first source you cite is reference 1. The next new source is 2. When you cite source 1 again on page 30, it is still 1. A reference that appears first inside a table or a figure legend takes its number from the point in the text where that table or figure is first mentioned, which is the rule people most often get wrong when they move a table during revision. Cite consecutive ranges as a range rather than a list. The moment you renumber anything by hand, the list has begun to drift. ### The parts of a journal reference A journal article is built from six elements in a fixed order: authors, article title, journal title abbreviated in the National Library of Medicine's form, year, the volume with the issue number in round brackets, and the page range. The article title takes sentence capitalisation, with no quotation marks and no italics. Page ranges are usually contracted, so 134 to 139 becomes 134-9. The pattern is worth memorising as a shape rather than copying from an example: - Journal article: Author AB, Author CD, Author EF. Title of the article in sentence case. Abbrev J Name. 2024;41(3):210-6. - Book: Author AB. Title of the book. 4th ed. New Delhi: Publisher; 2023. - Chapter in an edited book: Author AB. Title of the chapter. In: Editor CD, Editor EF, editors. Title of the book. 3rd ed. Mumbai: Publisher; 2022. p. 88-104. - Web source: Name of the issuing organisation. Title of the page [Internet]. Place: Publisher; 2024 [cited 2026 Sep 20]. Available from: the full URL. - Thesis or dissertation: Author AB. Title of the thesis [dissertation]. Place: Name of the university; 2021. The bracketed Internet tag and the cited date are what make a web reference checkable, and they are the two things almost always missing from a first draft. Regulatory documents, national guidelines and registry entries are usually cited in this form, so if your thesis leans on a guideline, this is the pattern you will use most. ### Six or more authors The sample references published for the ICMJE recommendations list the first six authors and then et al. when a paper has more than six. This is not universal: the National Library of Medicine itself now records all authors, and individual journals differ, some asking for every name and some for three followed by et al. For a thesis, follow your university's template where it states a rule, and where it is silent use the first six and et al. throughout. What is actually assessed is that every entry in the list follows the same rule. ### The reference you have not read Do not cite a paper you have only seen quoted inside another paper. If the original is genuinely unobtainable, say in the text that you are relying on a secondary report and cite what you actually read. Examiners ask which source a particular claim came from, and the question is usually aimed at the claim that sounds most confident. Reading at least the abstract, methods and limitations of everything you cite is slower on the way in and very much faster in the viva. ### Using a reference manager without letting it corrupt the list Zotero, Mendeley and EndNote all produce a clean numbered list, and all three will produce a broken one if they are fed bad records or edited by hand. The failure is almost never the software; it is the library behind it. - Import records from PubMed or from the publisher's own page, never by typing them, and never from a pop-up citation box without checking what it produced. - Check every record on the day you import it: author initials, abbreviated journal title, year, volume, issue, pages, and whether the title has lost its capitalisation, its Greek letters or its superscripts. - Keep one library for the whole thesis. Two libraries is how the same paper arrives twice with two different numbers. - Never edit a formatted bibliography by hand in your word processor. The field regenerates, and your correction disappears at the worst possible moment. - Before you print, convert the citations to plain text in a copy of the file, and keep the linked version as your working document so later edits still renumber correctly. - Read the converted copy as a PDF before it goes to the binder. Superscript numbers and page ranges are where the formatting usually breaks. ### The errors that actually get caught - A number pointing at the wrong entry because a paragraph was moved late in the revision. - Entries sitting in the list that are never cited anywhere in the text. - The same paper twice, from two slightly different imported records. - Journal titles written out in full in one half of the list and abbreviated in the other. - A web reference with no access date, or a URL that no longer resolves. - An in-press citation for a paper that was published two years ago. - Accented characters and symbols rendered as question marks after a conversion. ### When to do it Set aside an hour with the reference list open beside the thesis before each draft goes to your guide, and check the first citation of every reference against the sentence it supports. It is the highest-yield hour in the whole submission, because these are the only errors in a thesis that can be found and fixed with complete certainty. Everything else in the document is a matter of judgement. This part is simply either right or wrong. --- ## Preparing for the thesis viva: what the examiner is actually assessing URL: https://mdthesis.com/guides/viva-preparation-medical-thesis Published: 2026-09-11 How to open in two minutes, the questions asked almost every time, how to answer one you cannot answer, and how to prepare from your own thesis rather than a list. The viva is a short conversation about a document you know better than anyone else in the room. That asymmetry is an advantage only if you have prepared from your own thesis rather than from a list of predicted questions. ### What the external examiner is assessing Under the National Medical Commission's Post Graduate Medical Education Regulations 2023, the MD and MS thesis is assessed within the practical and viva examination and is judged by an external examiner from outside the state. For DNB and DrNB, the thesis is assessed by assessors appointed by the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences before the final examination, and the questioning at the table is about work that has already been read and marked. Either way, nobody is re-running your statistics in the room. What is being tested is narrower and more human than most residents expect: whether the work is substantively yours, and whether you understand why it was done the way it was. - Do you know your own data well enough to answer without looking it up? - Can you justify the design, the setting, the period and the criteria you chose? - Do you understand the tests that were run, at the level of what they assume about your data? - Do you know your limitations before the examiner names them? - Can you place your finding beside the published literature, including the studies that disagree? ### The first two minutes You will usually be asked to describe your work at the start, though the format varies by institution. Have five sentences ready and practise them aloud until they are not recited. One sentence on the clinical gap that made the question worth asking. One on design, setting, period and number of participants. One or two on the principal finding, with direction and magnitude. One on what it means for practice in your setting. One on the main limitation, offered by you rather than extracted from you. Offering the limitation yourself changes the tone of everything that follows, because it establishes that you are the person in the room who has thought about this the longest. Do not open with a definition of the disease, and do not open with the burden of the disease in the world. Both signal that you are delivering a presentation rather than discussing your own work. ### The questions that come up almost every time - Why this topic? Give two reasons, one clinical and one practical: the specific gap you noticed in your own department, and the fact that your hospital could realistically answer it in the time available. - Why this sample size? Know the formula, the assumed values, the study those values came from, the power and the alpha, and the attrition allowance. Know whether you reached the number, and if not, say so plainly and say what it cost you. - Why this statistical test? Start from the variable, not from the test: what you measured, on what scale, how the distribution looked, what you did about it, and which test follows from that. - Why this inclusion or exclusion criterion? Every criterion narrowed your population for a reason. Be able to give the reason for the one that narrowed it most. - What is your most important finding? One sentence and one number. A candidate who needs three sentences here usually has not decided what the thesis is about. - What would you do differently? Answer at the level of design, not effort. A larger multicentre sample, a randomised allocation, an objective endpoint, a longer follow-up. Not that you would work faster. - Has anyone found the opposite? Know the two or three papers that disagree with you and the reason each one might differ. - Who did the statistics and who wrote this? Answer honestly. You are expected to have had a guide, and in many departments a statistician. You are expected to understand and be able to defend every choice that was made. ### Prepare from the thesis, not from a question bank Read your own thesis with a pen and write a question in the margin at every point where you made a choice: why this definition, why this cut-off, why this duration, why this test, why this table. You will generate dozens of questions, and they will be better than any list because they are about your document. Then answer them out loud, because an answer that is clear in your head is often not yet clear in your mouth. - Make one page you can revise in five minutes: objectives, design, setting, period, sample size with formula and source, the tests used, your three headline numbers, three limitations, three papers that agree and two that disagree. - Be able to draw your study flow from memory: screened, eligible, enrolled, completed, analysed, with the losses at each step. - Know your master chart, including how missing values were handled and what your total actually is in each table. - Tab your own bound copy so you can reach any table within a few seconds. - Ask your guide or a senior resident for twenty minutes of questions you have not seen, and do it at least a week before, not the night before. ### Answering a question you cannot answer Say so, briefly, without apologising, and then give the nearest thing you do know. That you do not have the incidence for that age group, but in your own sample the figure was this, and the paper you relied on reported that for adults. Do not invent a number. A guessed figure invites a second question on the same ground, and the second question is the one that does the damage. Do not argue with an examiner about a fact neither of you can check in the room. When a question sounds hostile, it is usually testing whether you will defend the work or abandon it. Do neither reflexively. If the criticism is correct, concede it precisely and show where the thesis already accounts for it, because a conclusion stated for tertiary-care patients is not undone by the observation that it may not apply in primary care. If the criticism rests on a misreading, point at the page rather than contradicting the examiner. ### The practical side What you carry and whether you present at all varies by institution, so confirm the format with your department rather than assuming. Ask whether there is a presentation, how long it runs, and whether slides are expected. Keep together your bound copies, the declaration signed by you and your guide, the ethics committee approval letter with its date, the similarity report your institution requires, your e-logbook, and evidence of the research activity and presentations your regulations require. The regulations themselves are worth one read in the original before the viva, because questions about process are asked more often than residents expect and are the easiest of all to prepare for. --- ## Why medical theses get sent back, and how to avoid each reason URL: https://mdthesis.com/guides/why-medical-theses-get-sent-back Published: 2026-09-11 Objectives that do not match the analysis, sample sizes with no justification, ethics approval dated late, templates ignored: the common reasons, and the fix for each. Theses come back for modification for a surprisingly small number of reasons, and the same ones repeat across specialties and institutions. Nearly all of them are visible in the document before it is submitted, which means nearly all of them can be removed in an afternoon by someone who knows what to look for. ### The objective does not match the analysis This is the most expensive error, because fixing it can mean reworking two chapters. The objective says you will compare something between two groups; the results report proportions in each group with no comparison. Or the objective promises to assess an association and the analysis reports only descriptive statistics. Or the objectives list four things and the results answer three. The fix is mechanical. Write your numbered objectives on one sheet of paper. Beside each, write the table or figure that answers it and the test that was applied. Every objective must have a line. Every table in the results must trace back to an objective or to the baseline description. Anything unmatched on either side is either a missing analysis or an analysis you never promised, and the second kind usually belongs in an appendix or nowhere. ### The sample size cannot be justified An assessor who cannot reconstruct your sample size from what is written will ask for it, every time. A number with no formula behind it, assumed values with no citation, a calculation for a different outcome from the one you analysed, or a recruited sample well below the calculated one with no explanation are all routine grounds for a return. Write the formula, the assumed values, the published source those values came from, the power, the alpha, the attrition allowance and the final figure, as a short paragraph in the methods. If you recruited fewer than you planned, say how many and why, and carry that into the limitations rather than leaving the assessor to find the discrepancy themselves. ### Ethics approval is dated after data collection began Institutional Ethics Committee approval must precede any research on human participants, which is what the Indian Council of Medical Research's National Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical and Health Research Involving Human Participants, 2017 require. A thesis whose data collection period starts before the date on its approval letter has a problem that no amount of rewriting fixes, and it is among the easiest things for an assessor to check, because both dates are printed in the thesis. Check the two dates against each other now, not at submission. If your study period in the methods reads from a month earlier than the approval letter because that is when you started screening records, correct the methods to the truth and state what happened. A retrospective study needs its approval before the records are accessed, not before the period the records cover. If there is a genuine mismatch, it is a conversation with your guide and your ethics committee, and it is far better had early. ### The same data in a table and a chart Presenting one set of numbers twice, once as a table and once as a bar chart on the facing page, is a routine formatting objection and one of the simplest to fix. Choose one. A table when the reader needs the exact values, a chart when the shape of the distribution or a trend over time is the point. Never both for the same data, and never a pie chart of two categories that a single sentence would carry better. While you are there: every table needs a number, a title above it that says population and variable, and a note defining every abbreviation in it, so the table can be read without the paragraph beside it. ### The discussion does not discuss A discussion that restates the results in words, or that summarises ten previous studies without ever bringing them into contact with your own finding, gets marked as not a discussion. The corrective is to lead each paragraph with your result and use published work as the material you argue with. Limitations should be specific and directional rather than a single line about sample size, and the closing recommendation should name what the next study ought to change. ### Consent documentation is missing or incomplete Assessors look for the participant information sheet and the consent form, in the language in which they were actually administered, usually as annexures. The common gaps are an English form for a population that consented in a regional language, no assent document where minors were involved, and a thesis on records or stored samples that does not say whether the ethics committee granted a waiver of consent. Say what was done, attach what was used, and where a waiver applies, name it and say who granted it. ### The institution's own template was ignored Margins, font size, line spacing, binding, the order of the preliminary pages, the wording of the certificate and declaration, the number of copies, whether a similarity report must be bound in, and the length limit are all set locally, and there is no general rule to follow. MDThesis does not and cannot tell you what your institution requires here. Get the current template from your department or university website, check the date on it, and format to it from the first chapter rather than reformatting 80 pages in the last week. For DNB and DrNB, the NBEMS thesis guidelines cap the submitted thesis at 80 pages and set out the declarations required from the trainee, the guide and the head of the institution, so read the current version on the NBEMS portal rather than a senior's copy from three years ago. ### Numbers that do not reconcile Percentages that do not sum, a total in one table that differs from the total in another with no stated reason, a figure in the abstract that does not appear anywhere in the results, a p value in the text that contradicts the table. Each of these individually is small. Together they make an assessor doubt the dataset. Read the abstract last, against the final tables, and check that every number in it exists unchanged in the chapter it came from. ### What happens if it does come back It is recoverable, and it is common enough that it should not be treated as a catastrophe. For DNB and DrNB, the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences allows a modified thesis to be submitted within six weeks of the assessors' remarks, so the remarks arrive with a clock attached and the first thing to do is read them twice and plan the six weeks backwards. For MD and MS, the route after a modification is requested is set by your university, and the timelines differ, so ask your department for the specific process rather than assuming the NBEMS window applies to you. The National Medical Commission's clarifications issued in 2024 under the Post Graduate Medical Education Regulations 2023 confirmed that prior acceptance of the thesis is not a prerequisite for appearing in the final examination, which changes the consequence of a late modification considerably, though your university's own internal deadlines still stand. ### A pre-submission pass that catches most of this - Objectives sheet: every objective has a table and a test, and every table has an objective. - Ethics approval date sits before the first day of data collection, and both dates appear in the thesis. - Sample size paragraph contains formula, values, source, power, alpha and the final number. - No dataset appears as both a table and a chart. - Consent and information documents are annexed in the language used, or a waiver is named. - Abstract numbers match the results chapter exactly. - Reference numbers run in order of first appearance and every entry is cited. - The document matches the current institutional template, checked against the copy on your university's own site. --- ## MD, MS, DNB and DrNB thesis requirements compared URL: https://mdthesis.com/guides/md-ms-dnb-thesis-differences Published: 2026-09-11 Who sets the rules for each qualification, how timelines and submission routes differ, what a DM or MCh dissertation adds, and what is the same everywhere. MD, MS, DNB, DrNB, DM and MCh all require a thesis or dissertation, and residents often assume the requirements are broadly the same. They are not, because the documents are not governed by the same body. The practical differences are in who approves your protocol, when the clock starts, and to whom the finished thesis goes. ### Who sets the rules For MD, MS, DM and MCh at a medical college affiliated to a university, two authorities apply at once. The National Medical Commission's Post Graduate Medical Education Regulations 2023 set the national framework, and your university sets the detail: the template, the internal deadlines, the number of copies, the wording of the certificate, the similarity report it will accept and the committee that clears your protocol. Where the university is stricter than the framework, the university governs what you actually hand in. For DNB and DrNB there is one authority for both halves. The National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences sets the calendar, receives the protocol and the thesis through its own portal, appoints the assessors, and conducts the examination. There is no affiliating university in between, which makes the process more uniform across the country and considerably less forgiving about dates. ### MD and MS Regulation 5.2(ii) of PGMER-2023 keeps the thesis compulsory for every broad-specialty postgraduate. It is assessed within the practical and viva examination, carries 20 marks, and is judged by an external examiner from outside the state. Regulation 5.2(x) additionally requires at least one research activity before the final examination, a poster or oral presentation at a state-level or higher conference or a first-author paper, alongside a research methodology course, Good Clinical Practice training and a maintained e-logbook. The Commission's clarifications issued in April, June and August 2024 confirmed that prior acceptance of the thesis is not a prerequisite for appearing in the final examination. Submission still runs through your head of department and the dean, and universities still set their own internal cut-off, commonly several months before the examination. That internal date, not the national framework, is the one you plan against, and it is the one you should have in writing from your department in your first year. ### DNB and DrNB The NBEMS thesis guidelines run the tightest calendar in Indian postgraduate medicine, and each date is enforced rather than advisory. For three-year courses, the protocol with institutional ethics committee approval is uploaded on the NBEMS portal within 180 days of joining. Data collection completes by 24 months. The thesis is submitted for assessment by 26 months, with a late window at 27 months on payment of a fee. Submissions are capped at 80 pages, and assessors' remarks must be addressed in a modified thesis within six weeks. Fees, forms and page limits are revised from time to time, so read the current guideline document on the NBEMS portal rather than relying on a senior's copy, and if your course is not a three-year DNB or DrNB, confirm which dates apply to your duration. The structural difference that matters most: for DNB and DrNB the thesis is assessed separately and in advance of the examination, by assessors you never meet, working from the document alone. Nothing you say later can compensate for something the document fails to explain. For MD and MS the thesis and the person arrive together in front of an external examiner. Both routes reward a clear methods chapter, but the NBEMS route punishes an unclear one harder. ### DM, MCh and super-specialty DrNB A super-specialty dissertation is governed the same way as the broad-specialty thesis of the same stream, by the university under the NMC framework for DM and MCh and by NBEMS for DrNB, and the thesis requirement is not waived at this level. What changes is the nature of the question. The population is narrower, sometimes a few dozen patients a year in the whole unit, so feasibility stops being a formality and becomes the design constraint. A three-year window does not help if the condition presents a handful of times a year in the unit. In practice that pushes super-specialty dissertations towards a registry-style prospective cohort, a well-defined retrospective series with a clean protocol for record access, or a narrowly framed comparison of techniques already in routine use in the unit. The expectation of depth is higher, because a super-specialty examiner may be one of a small number of people in the country working on your exact question and may know the literature as well as you do. The detail of length, format and the number of copies is, again, set by the individual university, and a university may ask more of a super-specialty dissertation than of an MD or MS thesis, so confirm what applies to your own course. ### What differs in practice - Protocol approval: your university or institutional committee for MD, MS, DM and MCh; the NBEMS portal, after institutional ethics committee clearance, for DNB and DrNB. - When the clock starts: a national 180-day protocol deadline for DNB and DrNB; a university-set date for MD and MS, which you must obtain locally. - Who assesses: an external examiner within the practical and viva examination for MD and MS; NBEMS-appointed assessors in advance of the examination for DNB and DrNB. - Marks: 20 marks within the clinical assessment under PGMER-2023 for MD and MS; for DNB and DrNB the thesis is assessed separately, and the NBEMS examination information bulletins make submission by the stated deadline a condition of eligibility for the final theory examination. - Length: an 80-page cap under the NBEMS guidelines; a limit set by each university, or none stated, for MD and MS. - Modification: six weeks from the assessors' remarks under NBEMS; a route and a timeline set by your university otherwise. ### What is the same everywhere - Institutional ethics committee approval must precede data collection, as the ICMR's 2017 national ethical guidelines require, and prospective interventional studies are registered with the Clinical Trials Registry of India. - Informed consent, documented in the language the participant actually speaks, or a committee-granted waiver on the record. - One objective that maps to one outcome and one analysis, and a sample size with a formula, assumed values and a cited source. - A similarity check. Universities following UGC 2018, the University Grants Commission's plagiarism regulations, treat similarity under 10% as acceptable; for DNB and DrNB, read what the current NBEMS thesis guideline asks for rather than assuming the university convention applies to you. - Vancouver numbered referencing, unless your template specifies otherwise. - You are the sole author. A guide, a co-guide, a statistician and an editor may all contribute, and none of them becomes an author of your thesis. ### Which set of rules applies to you Work from the body that will issue your degree, not from the hospital you are training in. A resident in a DNB seat at a large private hospital follows NBEMS even though the hospital also trains MD residents under a university; a resident in an MD seat at the same hospital follows the university. If you are unsure, your joining letter and your registration documents say which, and the difference decides every deadline in the next three years. --- ## Turning your thesis into a published paper URL: https://mdthesis.com/guides/thesis-to-publication Published: 2026-09-11 What changes between a thesis and a manuscript, how to judge a journal honestly, the ICMJE authorship criteria, writing a cover letter, and answering reviewers properly. A thesis and a paper are two different documents written from the same work. The thesis exists to prove that you did the study and understood it. The paper exists to tell a specialist who has ten minutes what you found and whether they should change anything. Converting one into the other is mostly deletion, and most residents underestimate how much. ### What actually changes - Length. A thesis runs to tens of pages; a research paper in most clinical journals is a few thousand words. Every journal states its own limit in its instructions to authors, and that document, not a general rule, is what you write to. - The review of literature. Chapters of it collapse into three or four paragraphs of introduction that establish the gap and nothing else. This is the single biggest cut. - Methods. Tighter, but nothing load-bearing removed: design, setting, period, eligibility, sample size justification, outcome definitions, the statistical plan and the ethics approval with the committee named. - Results. Keep only the tables and figures that carry the argument, usually three or four. Baseline characteristics, the primary outcome, and whatever the discussion genuinely needs. - Discussion. Rebuilt, not trimmed. You are now writing for someone who already knows the field, so the comparison with published work does the work and the background drops away. - The abstract. Structured to the journal's headings and word limit, written last, with every number checked against the final tables. - Reporting checklist. Most clinical journals expect the relevant reporting guideline, and the EQUATOR Network hosts the main ones, including CONSORT for randomised trials, STROBE for observational studies and PRISMA for systematic reviews. Fill the checklist honestly; it usually exposes one thing the thesis never stated. ### One paper or two Most theses make one good paper. Splitting a single study into several thin reports to raise a publication count is recognised immediately by editors, and journals following the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors' recommendations treat redundant and overlapping publication as a matter of research integrity, not style. If there is a genuine second paper, it answers a different question with a different outcome, and you should disclose the related submission in your cover letter either way. ### Choosing a journal honestly Start from readership rather than prestige. Which journal do the papers in your own reference list appear in, and would its readers change anything after reading your study? Then check scope, article types accepted, word limit, and whether there is a fee. If there is an article processing charge, know the figure before submission, not after acceptance. Indexed, on its own, means nothing. Ask which index. MEDLINE and PubMed are run by the United States National Library of Medicine, and being deposited in PubMed Central is not the same as being indexed in MEDLINE, though journals blur the two in their advertising. Scopus is Elsevier's; Web of Science and the impact factors published in the Journal Citation Reports are Clarivate's; the Directory of Open Access Journals lists open-access journals that meet its own criteria. Search for the journal inside the index it claims and see whether it is actually there. One change worth knowing about in India. The University Grants Commission no longer maintains the CARE reference list of journals that many departments still ask for by name. The Commission decided to discontinue it at its 584th meeting in October 2024, communicated that decision in February 2025, and recommended instead that institutions develop their own mechanisms for judging journal quality; it followed this with a public notice in July 2025 setting out suggestive parameters for choosing a peer-reviewed journal. So if a senior tells you to publish in a CARE-listed journal, the list is no longer being maintained, and the question to put to your own institution is what it now accepts for academic credit. ### Spotting a predatory journal - An email arriving days after your thesis was submitted, praising work the sender cannot have read, and inviting a submission. - A promise of peer review within days, or any promise at all about the outcome. - A fee that appears only after acceptance, or a fee that can be negotiated. - An editorial board with no affiliations, or names you cannot find at the institutions claimed. - A title nearly identical to an established journal, sometimes differing by one word. - Claimed metrics from organisations you have never heard of, and indexing claims that do not survive a search inside the index itself. - A scope covering all of medicine, engineering and management at once. - No verifiable postal address for the publisher. For a positive test rather than a negative one, the Committee on Publication Ethics, the Directory of Open Access Journals, the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association and the World Association of Medical Editors jointly publish the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing, whose current version dates from 2022 and sets out what a legitimate journal discloses about ownership, peer review, fees and ethics policies. The Think. Check. Submit. initiative offers a shorter checklist of the same kind. Ten minutes with either is cheaper than the alternative, because a paper published in a predatory journal is difficult to withdraw and can be refused recognition afterwards. ### Who belongs on the paper The ICMJE recommendations set four authorship criteria, and an author is expected to meet all four: a substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work, or to the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of its data; drafting it or reviewing it critically for important intellectual content; approving the version that is published; and agreeing to be accountable for the accuracy and integrity of the whole of it. Because all four are required together, the contributions the ICMJE puts in the acknowledgements instead are the ones that stop at the first hurdle: obtaining the funding, general supervision of the group, administrative support, and writing or language help. A guide who shaped the question, read the drafts and will answer for the work does qualify. A statistician who designed the analysis, interpreted it, revised the manuscript and will stand behind it qualifies; one who ran tests on a dataset and had no further involvement belongs in the acknowledgements. Discuss the order of authors before the first draft, not after the reviews come back. Our own position follows from the same criteria: mentoring, editing, statistical support and compliance review do not satisfy them. MDThesis never appears in an author line. If our contribution is disclosed anywhere, it is in your acknowledgements. ### The cover letter One page, addressed to the editor by name where the journal names one. Say what you are submitting and as what article type. One sentence on the question, two on the principal finding with its numbers, one on why this journal's readers in particular should see it. Then the declarations, which are what the editorial office actually reads for: that the work is original and not under consideration elsewhere, that ethics approval was obtained with the committee named, the trial registration number where one applies, any conflicts of interest, funding, and the corresponding author's details. No adjectives about novelty or importance. The manuscript makes that case or it does not. ### Answering reviewers - Reply point by point, numbered to match the reviewers' numbering, quoting each comment before your response so nothing can be read as skipped. - For each, say what you changed and where, with the page or line number in the revised manuscript. - You may disagree, with a reason and a reference. Reviewers are sometimes wrong, and a courteous, evidenced disagreement is read as competence. - Where you cannot do what is asked, because the data were not collected, say so plainly, explain why, and add it to the limitations rather than leaving it unanswered. - Thank the reviewers once, at the start. Thanking them in every item reads as padding. - Never send a revised manuscript without the response document, and never send a revision that quietly ignores a comment. - A rejection with substantive reviews is worth more than it feels like at the time. Act on the comments, then submit to the next journal on your list with the paper improved. ### What nobody can promise No one can promise you acceptance, a timeline, or publication in an indexed journal, and anybody who does is describing the predatory model rather than the editorial one. The decision belongs to an editor and to reviewers neither you nor we select. What can be done is to prepare the manuscript properly, match it to a journal that is a genuine fit, and answer reviewers thoroughly, which is the part that is actually within your control and the part we help with.