Skip to Main Content

Life and Health Sciences Harvard Referencing Guidelines: BMJ Best Practice

Life and Health Sciences Harvard Referencing Guidelines

BMJ Best Practice

BMJ Best Practice includes a range of resources and formats - case studies, videos, patient leaflets, specialties etc. Two examples are provided below:

1. Specialties or Case studies

The required elements for the reference are: 

Author Surname, INITIALS. (Year of publication/update) Title. BMJ Best Practice.  Available at: URL [Accessed date].

Reference List

Example of the full reference at the end of your assignment:

Calkins, H. (2021) Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome.  BMJ Best Practice. Available at: https://bestpractice.bmj.com/ [Accessed 12 August 2022].

In-text citation 

Example 1 - where the author's name occurs naturally in the sentence

According to Calkins (2021) ...

Example 2 - where the author's name does not occur naturally in the sentence

Catheter ablation is used as a treatment (Calkins 2021).

2. Patient leaflets

The required elements for the reference are: 

Author Surname, INITIALS./Corporate Author. (Year of publication/update) Title. BMJ Best Practice.  Available at: URL [Accessed date].

Reference List

Example of the full reference at the end of your assignment:

BMJ Best Practice. (2021) Antibiotics: what you need to know.  BMJ Best Practice. Available at: https://bestpractice.bmj.com/ [Accessed 12 August 2022].

In-text citation 

Example 1 - where the author's name occurs naturally in the sentence

The BMJ Best Practice patient leaflet (2021) states...

Example 2 - where the author's name does not occur naturally in the sentence

Antibiotics cannot be used to treat all patient conditions (BMJ Best Practice 2021).

Other points to note

Points to note:

  • If referencing the BMJ Best Practice database, the most recent version of each topic should be cited.
  • Use the url for the database, https://bestpractice.bmj.com/, rather than the url for the exact page of the video or text content (the latter will be significantly longer).
  • Follow the guidance for listing single, two or more than two authors or corporate authors as appropriate (see below). 
  • Follow the guidance for listing corporate authors as appropriate (see below). 
Other sources which may be useful