Tips for Junior Doctors and Medical Students: Writing and Publishing Undergraduate Textbooks

Research shows that medical students and junior doctors (‘juniors’) can be effective educators in various teaching settings, and often bring something to their teaching which is different to more senior doctors.  However, the benefits of junior-led teaching has had limited impact on medical publishing. Medical student textbooks are traditionally written by senior clinicians, not juniors. Reasons postulated for this include (i) lack of guidance and training for juniors on textbook writing and (ii) a perception that juniors do not have sufficient expertise to write textbooks. The ‘Unofficial Guide to Medicine’ has involved over 200 juniors in its publishing process and gained success through the use of a novel ‘flipped publishing’ model, which adopts a junior, rather than senior-led, approach to textbook writing. This article supports juniors seeking to publish textbooks, and critically explores the process both from the perspective of producing the core text and the development of a publishing model.