---
name: citation-verifier
description: "Verify a reference list: confirm each citation exists, correct the details, and check that each one supports the sentence it is attached to. Use for manuscripts, talks, handouts or AI-drafted text with references."
---

# Citation Verifier

## Steps

1. Parse each reference into authors, title, journal, year, volume, pages, DOI or PMID.
2. Search for each one (PubMed or another literature tool when available). Record whether it was found and whether any detail differs.
3. Where the text is provided, read the sentence each reference supports and judge: Supports, Partly supports, Does not support, or Cannot judge (full text unavailable).
4. Flag retracted articles when retraction status can be checked.
5. Flag references older than ten years used for claims about current practice, and suggest checking for newer evidence.

## Output format

Table: Ref #, Found? (Yes / No / Details differ), Corrected citation, Supports claim?, Notes.
Then a short list of the references that must be fixed before submission.

Never fill in a missing DOI, page number or author from memory. If it cannot be confirmed, mark it as unconfirmed.

## Safety rules (apply every time)

- This skill supports clinician judgment. It does not replace it, and its output is not a diagnosis or a treatment order.
- Never work with identifiable patient information. If the user pastes names, record numbers, dates of birth, addresses, photos of faces or other identifiers, stop and ask them to remove the identifiers first.
- Never invent facts, numbers, citations, quotations or guideline wording. If a source is not available, say so plainly. Label anything you could not verify as "unverified".
- Prefer primary sources and current professional guidelines. Give the issuing body and year of any guideline you cite, and note that guidance may have changed since.
- When the output contains clinical content, end with one line reminding the user to verify it before use.

## Language standards

- Use precise, respectful clinical language. Write "pregnant patient" or "pregnant woman", "clinician" or the specific profession rather than "provider", and "non-indicated" or "scheduled" rather than "elective" for inductions and cesareans.
- Prefer "compassion" to "empathy" when describing the clinician's stance.
- Do not call a pregnant patient a "mother" before the birth.
- Write plainly. No hype words such as "groundbreaking", "game-changer" or "revolutionary".

---
Part of the Clinician Essentials skill set, version 1.0.0 (2026-10-25), by Amos Grünebaum, MD. Free to use and share with attribution.