Workshop 1: The art of writing an abstract

Abstract:

Scientific abstracts cover the main points of a study and its results. They represent condensed and clearly structured summaries that allow the reader to understand the most important aspects (e.g. study rationale, methods, results) at a glance. The task of writing an abstract can be challenging, and several pitfalls may lead to impaired quality or even rejection of the abstract. First impressions matter!

In 2012, almost 200 submitted congress abstracts were rejected by the scientific committee of EAHP due to various reasons. Hence the current workshop will, among other things, address common pitfalls related to creating abstracts for EAHP and congresses in general.

The workshop is dedicated to ambitious hospital pharmacists who plan to submit a high-quality abstract for future congresses, want to improve their abstract writing skills and want to reduce the risk for abstract rejection.

Teaching Goals:

• to present good scientific practice when creating  scientific questions and choosing study methodology
• to outline the structure and the different parts of a high quality scientific abstract
• to illustrate the most common reasons for abstract rejection

Learning Objectives:

After participating in the workshop the participant should:

• be able to write a scientific abstract, according to the structure asked for by the EAHP
• be able to classify the two main different research approaches, i.e. qualitative or quantitative methods
• be able to avoid the most common pitfalls of writing an abstract and avoid reasons for abstract rejection.