Medical Essay Overview
Medical essays are some of the most common course requirements in medical school. As regular assignments, they can be given out as mid-semester evaluation tests or end-semester exams.
Scholars are required to demonstrate various learning skills, including understanding of various concepts, theories, bodies of knowledge, and their application in real world scenarios.
With the requisite skills, writing such essays can be quite an interesting endeavor. Writing a good medical essay demands an in-depth understanding of the relevant expectations.
Key Expectations on how to Write a Medical Essay
When writing a medical essay, you have to consider various expectations. These expectations encompass critical guidelines on how to write an essay.
They are usually the difference between a superior and a low quality essay. Such expectations are a discussed below.
a) A proper understanding of factual evidence: the medical essays seek to examine your understanding of all relevant scientific evidence acquired in theory and practice.
In the essay, you must demonstrate that you possess the right knowledge about the medical field.
b) Effective communication: communication is extremely important. Having extensive factual knowledge without adequate communication skills will always result into a poor essay.
Your facts must be well articulated to ensure that the reader fully understands your argument(s). This requires you to ensure that your grammar, punctuation, and syntax reflects adequate proficiency levels in English.
As well, it is critical to ensure that your sentences and paragraphs are fluent enough to allow fluidity in thoughts and arguments.
c) Accurate analysis of problems: medical essays require that you consider different and voluminous bodies on knowledge to help solve a particular problem.
Most of the topics explored by such essays are controversial and therefore require a thoughtfully considered opinion.
To achieve this, you should be able to dissect the essay problem into different basic components to find out which of the component weighs more consequently requiring more priority.
In this, in all your points/arguments, you must explain why one thing should be done and not the other.
d) Effective identification of relevant issues: medical essays in most cases encompass convoluted question(s). Therefore, you must accurately identify what issues you are supposed to address in the essay.
Inability to do this will result into failure in answering the correct question or addressing it sufficiently. As such, you should ensure that you understand and answer the right question.
This can only be realized through accurate identification of essay topic area(s) and topic scope.
e) Proper time management: whether it is a sit in or a take away essay, time management is a critical factor when writing a medical essay.
The essay generally requires adequate research, analysis of different sets of facts, and proper compilation of evidence. This is a time consuming process and proper time management comes in handy.
Late submission is usually punishable and you are therefore required to demonstrate your ability to manage time effectively.
Steps on how to Write a Medical Essay
Writing a medical essay could assume numerous steps. These steps are critical in helping realize work that resonates with all elements of a good essay. These steps are as elaborated below.
a) Conducting a basic research on essay topic: This step encompasses examining the essay topic/question to help comprehend the expected answers, scope, and standards.
You must adequately explore the requirements of the essay provided in the instructions. Such requirements could be explicit or implicit in the essay instructions.
You are required to respond adequately to both set of requirements.
b) Generating essay thesis: An appropriate thesis is one of the major elements of a good essay. The thesis should clearly put forward an argument that will be advanced in the essay.
It should appear in the introduction part, and in most cases, as the last sentence. The thesis statement must be concise and all-encompassing.
It is essential to keep on referencing the thesis in the essay body to ensure that the essay remains on course.
c) Listing down the main points: This entails developing a rough draft based on the essay's key arguments to support the thesis.
You are supposed to note down numerous points and conduct a research to find out which of these points can be supported with adequate evidence.
Then continue to select the points with adequate evidence, focusing more on supportive data and examples.
d) Developing a rough draft: This step entails developing your argument from the selected points. The argument should be developed around paragraphs, with each point being covered in a separate paragraph.
These paragraphs and the whole essay should assume the correct essay structure. Such structure looks at key aspects such as topic sentences and transitions.
e) Re-writing the essay: This step involves finalizing the essay. It encompasses developing the essay introduction and conclusion. In following good essay writing practices, you should ensure that these two parts are written last.
You should start with the introduction, highlighting all the key points to be covered in the essay. The conclusion should then follow and summarize the main points in the essay.
f) Proofreading the essay: This is an essential step in medical essay writing. It is meant to eliminate all errors and enhance coherence.
It is important to note that however good an essay could be, errors and mistakes significantly lower its quality.
You should therefore go through the essay at least twice to ensure that it is devoid of grammatical errors and it effectively answers the question asked.