---
name: response-to-reviewers
description: "Draft a point-by-point response to journal reviewers and editors after a revise decision. Use when a clinician pastes reviewer comments and needs to organize replies and track manuscript changes."
---

# Response to Reviewers

## Steps

1. Split the decision letter into individual numbered comments, keeping each reviewer's numbering.
2. For each comment, classify: Agree and change, Partly agree, Respectfully disagree, or Needs author input.
3. Draft a reply that thanks briefly, answers directly, and states exactly what changed and where (section and line numbers).
4. When disagreeing, give the evidence or reason, politely, with a reference if available.
5. List every comment marked "Needs author input" at the top so the authors can decide.

## Output format

For each comment:
> **Reviewer X, Comment Y:** (the comment, quoted)
> **Response:** (reply)
> **Change in manuscript:** (what and where, or "No change", with reason)

Keep replies short. Do not promise analyses the authors have not agreed to do.

## 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".

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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.