Submitting to The Hippocratic Review
The Hippocratic Review exists to support the formation of medical trainees and clinicians and to foster dialogue with our community about the moral and formational dimensions of medicine and medical training.
As an initiative of the Hippocratic Society, The Hippocratic Review is especially invested in exploring themes such as virtue formation, medicine as a moral community, patient-centered care, human dignity, and medicine as a higher calling.
We welcome submissions from pre-medical and medical students, residents, attending physicians, scholars, and members of the medical community who wish to reflect thoughtfully on the moral, human, and formational dimensions of medicine. Whether through essay, narrative, poetry, or art, we invite contributions that join an ongoing conversation about what it means to practice good medicine.
Topics We Welcome
- Physician Formation - the development of character and identity across medical training
- Suffering, Illness, and What It Means to Care - the meaning of illness and what it asks of caregivers
- The Doctor-Patient Relationship - trust, character, and the bond between healer and healed
- Practicing the Virtues - embodied character in clinical care and medical training
- Medical Humanities - creative and critical work drawing on art, literature, or myth
- Philosophy of Medicine - the nature, purpose, and direction of medicine as a discipline and a profession
Article Types
| Type | Description | Length |
|---|---|---|
| Essays | Substantive, original essays engaging the moral and formational dimensions of medicine. | Max 3,500 words |
| Progress Notes | First-person narratives and reflections drawn from personal or clinical experience. | Max 1,500 words |
| Reviews | Critical reviews of books, essays, film, or works of art relevant to medicine and the humanities. | Max 1,000 words |
| Poetry | Original poetry engaging the journal’s themes. | Max 50 lines |
| Creative Writing | Original short fiction or creative prose. | Max 2,500 words |
| Original Art | Original visual art accompanied by a brief artist’s commentary. | Commentary max 500 words |
| Correspondence | Brief responses engaging with a piece published in a previous issue. | Max 500 words |
| Praxis | Reflections on the practical work of living out and teaching the medical humanities. | Max 2,500 words |
| Annals of Medicine | Historical essays or retrospectives on medicine, its practice, or its traditions. | Max 2,500 words |
Next Issue
Theme: Hope in and for Medicine
Submission Deadline: October 26, 2026
Publication: January 2027
Call for Submissions: Hope in and for Medicine
The next issue of The Hippocratic Review will focus on Hope in and for Medicine, stemming from the most recent annual conference for The Hippocratic Society held in June 2026 in Houston, Texas.
How do we pursue a more beautiful practice of medicine when time and clarity feel increasingly scarce? What can one clinician do to change a reimbursement structure? What can a student do in the face of entrenched institutional dysfunction? Hope is at least part of the answer.
- What is the virtue of hope, and what is its place in medicine? What is its relation to optimism?
- How do we sustain hope in medical education and clinical formation?
- How do we maintain hope in our own lives as clinicians and trainees? What is the good we seek, and what practices help us persevere toward it?
- For what and for whom are we hoping?
- How can we engage the diverse stated hopes of patients, families, and colleagues?
We invite authors to take up this theme in poetry and creative works, essays, personal narrative, and more. To consider inclusion in the special issue on Hope, authors should submit through our online portal by October 26th, 2026 for publication in January, 2027.
At the present, we plan for issues of The Hippocratic Review variably to gather under a focused theme, such as hope, as well as general issues within scope of the journal. We plan annually to have an issue related to the annual conference of The Hippocratic Society.
Formatting Guidelines
- Microsoft Word format preferred
- Standard 12-point font, double-spaced text
- Citations according to the Chicago Manual of Style, Notes-Bibliography system (citation guide)
- File name should follow the convention: Primary Author_Title
Submission Requirements
- All work must be original
- Manuscripts should contain Acknowledgements and Disclosures
- Authors must maintain patient confidentiality; identifying details should be changed or consent obtained
- Submissions should include contact information, institutional affiliation(s), and a brief author bio
- Review is not blinded
- There is no limit to the number of submissions per author
- Submissions are not guaranteed publication; unpublished pieces may be held for consideration in a future cycle
- First-time writers are encouraged to submit; writers from any role or level of training are welcome
AI Policy
AI use is prohibited for direct content generation of submissions.
Copyright & Licensing
Authors retain copyright of all submitted work. By submitting, authors grant The Hippocratic Review a non-exclusive license to publish and use their work in promotional materials. All published work is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 (CC BY-NC) license, which permits non-commercial republication with author attribution. For-profit use requires permission from the author.
Review Process
The Hippocratic Review conducts editorial review: submissions are read and evaluated by the journal’s own Editorial Board and Section Editors, rather than by anonymous outside subject-matter experts as in a peer-reviewed journal. Review is not blinded.
Editorial recommendations generally fall into three categories: Accept, Revise, or Decline. Where revisions are requested, a submission may go through more than one round of review before a final decision is reached.
Timeline:
- The Hippocratic Review publishes on a quarterly schedule
- Submissions close approximately 11 weeks before publication
- Authors receive a decision from the Managing Editor 4–6 weeks after the submission deadline
- If accepted with revisions, authors have 4 weeks to revise and resubmit