Bowers D, House A, Owens D. Understanding clinical papers. Second edition. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2006.

The second edition of this practical guide to understanding clinical papers will be very useful to anyone reading and preparing clinical papers—not only to students, but to researchers and clinicians as well. The authors aim to explain the important elements found in clinical research papers and how to interpret them, from the abstract, introduction, and results, to the discussion and conclusions. They provide examples from a wide range of interesting published papers and highlight the elements being discussed in each paper with explanatory annotations. This is a very effective tool and immediately clarifies the question being addressed. The various chapters are clear and concise, never becoming laborious.

The book is divided into 8 parts. …