The Indian Practitioner

Overview

The Indian Practitioner is a monthly English-language medical journal published from Mumbai, Maharashtra. Established in 1947, it is dedicated to medicine, surgery and public health, and is written for practising doctors rather than for academic researchers alone. Its own description stresses contemporary content, reader-friendly language and a commitment to informing and updating doctors working in India's medical and healthcare industries.

Over more than seven decades, the journal has presented itself as a pioneer of first-hand medical journalism in India. That positioning matters: this is a journal that mixes peer-reviewed clinical articles with news, interviews, profiles and practical features, aiming to serve the whole professional life of a doctor, not only the research side of it.

History and founding in 1947

The journal was established in 1947, the year of Indian independence, a timing that places its birth at the start of modern Indian medicine's expansion. Medical colleges, hospitals and a growing body of private practitioners all needed Indian professional literature of their own, and a monthly journal devoted to medicine, surgery and public health was a direct answer to that need.

The journal's longevity can be tracked in its volume numbering. Its April 2020 issue is Volume 73, Number 4, a sequence consistent with unbroken monthly publication from the late 1940s. Recent archives on its website list issues month by month through the 2020s, including a full run of monthly issues for 2025 and into 2026, showing a title that is still appearing on schedule in its ninth decade.

Language, scope and subject coverage

The Indian Practitioner is published in English and covers, in its own words, the entire spectrum of medicine. Articles in allopathy are its primary content, and those articles are peer reviewed. They include original clinical studies, trials and case reports, the standard building blocks of clinical literature, presented in a form intended to be readable by a busy practitioner.

Reflecting the wider therapeutic landscape in India, the journal also covers complementary and alternative areas alongside allopathy. Its stated list includes Ayurveda, homeopathy, wellness, mind-body medicine, herbal medicine, nutraceuticals and cosmeceuticals. That breadth sets it apart from single-specialty journals: a reader can move from a clinical trial to a discussion of wellness or herbal therapeutics within the same title.

Publisher and editorial home in Mumbai

The journal is published from Mumbai, with its office given as Crystal Paradise on Dattaji Salvi Marg, off Veera Desai Road in Andheri, Mumbai. Its website is maintained and managed by Blockdale Media LLP. The journal carries both a print ISSN, 0019-6169, and an electronic ISSN, 2394-3017, identifiers that anchor it in the formal record of Indian periodicals in both formats.

Editorially, the journal states that its board consists of highly experienced doctors drawn from various aspects of medicine, whose role is to ensure the quality of its medical articles and features. For a general practitioner journal, that breadth on the board is essential, because submissions can range across internal medicine, surgery, public health and the alternative therapeutics the journal also covers.

What a typical issue contains

A look at a published issue shows how the journal is assembled. The December 2020 issue, for example, opens with an editorial, followed by original articles including a real-world study of continuous positive airway pressure in obstructive sleep apnoea and a retrospective study of oesophageal cancer at a tertiary care hospital in Himachal Pradesh. A further study compares serological and molecular methods in hepatitis B and C reactive blood donors. Alongside these sit a special article, a survey of an international healthcare system, in this case Canada, and a views-and-experiences piece offering an Ayurvedic perspective on COVID-19 management.

That mixture is deliberate. The journal regularly presents news in addition to original medical articles, features on medical devices, profiles of new drugs and medicines, reports of medical developments, doctor and hospital profiles, and interviews, as well as specific case reports. Its website organises content under headings that include Medi News, Medi Matters, editorials, articles, interviews and current issues, giving readers several distinct ways into each month's material.

Frequency and formats

The Indian Practitioner is a monthly journal, appearing twelve times a year. Its cover presentation describes it as a monthly journal devoted to medicine, surgery and public health, published from Mumbai, and individual issues are substantial, running to around seventy pages in the print-era examples preserved online.

Today the journal lives principally through its website, where each month's issue is posted and archived by year. Readers can browse current issues, work back through the archive to 2020 and earlier, and read editorials, articles and interviews as separate web items. The possession of both print and electronic ISSNs reflects that dual heritage: a print monthly that has become, in practice, a web-first professional publication.

Audience: the practising doctor

The journal is explicit about who it serves. Its readership spans private and government hospitals and clinics, private practitioners, physicians and surgeons, medical directors of pharmaceutical companies, and medical institutes and universities. That is the working medical establishment of India, from the solo general practitioner to the hospital administrator and the industry medical director.

This audience explains the journal's tone. A research journal can assume a specialist reader with library access and time; a practitioner journal must assume a doctor reading between patients. Hence the emphasis the publisher places on reader-friendly language, an accessible layout and first-hand reporting, features designed to make new clinical knowledge usable in daily practice rather than merely citable.

Peer review and article types

The journal states that its allopathic articles are peer reviewed and include original clinical studies, trials and case reports. Those three categories serve different needs. Original studies report new observations from Indian clinical settings; trials test interventions; and case reports preserve unusual presentations that a practitioner may one day meet and need to recognise.

Around that peer-reviewed core, the journal wraps the apparatus of professional journalism: editorials that comment on current questions, interviews with doctors, profiles of hospitals and of new drugs and devices, and news coverage of medical developments. The April 2020 issue, produced as the COVID-19 pandemic reached India, led with Indian perspectives and challenges on COVID-19, showing how quickly the journal can turn its format to an emergency affecting every reader.

Role in Indian medical journalism

The publisher describes the journal as being in the forefront of Indian medical journalism after widening its lead over six decades. Stripped of promotional language, the underlying point is sound: general medical journalism of this kind, Indian-owned, Indian-edited and addressed to Indian practice, was still a young field when the journal began in 1947, and The Indian Practitioner is one of the titles that built it.

Its role today is complementary to that of the specialty research journals. Where those titles deepen one narrow field, this journal keeps the generalist informed across fields, which remains vital in a country where many patients first meet a doctor in general practice. A monthly that combines clinical studies with drug news, device features, interviews and public health coverage gives that generalist a single, regular point of professional updating.

How to read and contribute

Readers can access the journal through its official website, theindianpractitioner.com, where the current issue and the archive of past issues are listed by month and year. The site also carries guidelines for authors, a contact page and the journal's about page, giving prospective contributors a direct route to the editorial office in Mumbai.

For doctors wishing to publish, the practical path is to follow those author guidelines and submit work that fits the journal's established categories: an original clinical study, a trial, a case report, or a feature suited to its news, interview or profile sections. For readers, the habit the journal has encouraged since 1947 remains the same: one issue a month, read across the breadth of medicine, surgery and public health, from a journal written in Mumbai for practitioners across India.