A research protocol is best viewed as a key to open the gates between the researcher and his/her research objectives. Each gate is defended by a gatekeeper whose role is to protect the resources and principles of a domain: the ethics committee protects participants and the underlying tenets of good practice, the postgraduate office protects institutional academic standards, the health authority protects provincial resources etc. The protocol must explicitly address the issues likely to be

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... by these gatekeepers, demonstrating evidence of a clear understanding of the issues involved and that all components of the research plan have been addressed. The purpose of this paper is to add flesh to the skeleton provided in step six ('write the protocol') of the Biccard and Rodseth paper of 2014, orientated towards the first-time researcher working towards the MMed degree. Although occasional reference will be made to qualitative approaches, it is likely that the majority of these studies will be quantitative designs and these form the focus of this paper. This paper assumes that the student has a clear idea of what interests him/her, where the knowledge gap lies (from literature review) and has framed either a research question or hypothesis, even if not fully developed (steps 1-4, Biccard and Rodseth 1 ). Although requirements for protocol format vary between academic centres, we have kept largely to the structure recommended by Biccard and Rodseth, with slight modification (Table 1) .