Five Medical Writing Tips to Create Engaging Content

Medical writing is often used as an all-encompassing term for the development of a variety of medical and scientific documents targeting various audiences in the pharmaceutical industry (eg, medical professionals, patients, insurance companies), with various purposes. Some aspects of medical writing include:

• Writing clinical trial protocols, preparing reports on the results of clinical trials, and developing regulatory documents
• Creating educational materials about specific drugs, medical devices, and disease states for physicians, including PowerPoint presentations (or “slide decks”), videos depicting the mechanism of action of drugs, product monographs, patient case studies, white papers, reports, posters, and manuscripts for medical journals
• Drafting patient-facing materials such as information leaflets and brochures
• Producing medical marketing material for pharmaceutical companies, including websites, press releases, and newsletters

(For a more detailed primer on medical writing and the medical communications career path, make sure you read this article. 

For some general science writing tips, check out this article or this video).

Are you a medical writer who has recently embarked on a career in medical communications? Here are five tips that would help you improve your writing skills and create engaging medical writing content:

1) Be concise

As a medical writer, you need to be able to communicate clearly and concisely. Therefore, brevity is better than excess. If you have too much information in one place, then it can become confusing and/or overwhelming for your audience. You want to make sure that there is enough detail but not so much that people get lost reading through all of it. You should also avoid convoluted sentences and long-winded paragraphs. 

2) Know your audience

As a medical communicator, you may develop content that spans a wide range of topics, targeting different audiences. Who your audience is dictates your tone, content, and style – so, even if you are writing about the same topic, you may approach it differently if you are creating a patient brochure vs writing for a medical journal. It is important to think about what kind of information would be most helpful for your audience and how you can create content that achieves this objective in a concise, coherent manner. Ask yourself the following questions, “What basic understanding do my audience possess in this topic? What additional or specialized knowledge of scientific/medical concepts do they need to understand the topic better? How would I explain this concept to my audience? What kind of evidence supports my claims?”

3) Avoid jargon

Overuse of jargon is another pitfall that many aspiring medical communicators fall into. The vast majority of medical writers possess advanced medical or science degrees. This is a key asset when it comes to grasping complex scientific concepts and gaining in-depth knowledge of therapeutic areas quickly. However, many medical writers transitioning from the academic setting to writing primarily for the pharma industry struggle with the transition, as the objectives and demands of medical communications are not always the same as that of academic writing. Further, while the audience for academic writing are primarily derived from the academic field (eg, scientists in the same research area who may be the audience for articles published in an academic journal), this is not the case with many medial communications/medical education documents, whose audience may include healthcare professionals, pharma industry executives, or patients. A lot of times, in the medical or biomedical field, scientists and doctors often tend to communicate using many technical terms. However, this assumption often leads to confusion among those who aren’t familiar with the terminology. It can be very difficult for readers to understand what you mean if your language sounds unfamiliar. Therefore, avoid using unfamiliar words, phrases, or acronyms (“alphabet soup“) whenever possible. If they must be used and your audience are not familiar with a specific term, make sure to clarify the meaning.

4) Use active voice

As a rule of thumb, make sure that all verbs used have “active” forms. There is a misconception that passive voice gives off an air of authority and expertise. However, passive voice, while often spotted in academic writing, appears impersonal and…well, passive.

(Note that there are occasions when the use of passive voice is acceptable, or even preferable.)

5) Don’t forget to proofread and fact-check

Even though it might sound obvious, it is worth reiterating that proofreading and factchecking to ensure the quality of your document are essential. While many medical communications agencies have internal review and editing processes in place, freelance writers may not have this luxury. In either case, it helps if you can spot and correct errors or inconsistencies in grammar and spelling before submitting your work. It is easy to overlook small mistakes like missing punctuation marks, incorrect capitalization, and inconsistent formatting. Further, ensuring the scientific accuracy of the materials you develop is crucial because your audience may use the information while making decisions related to their health. So, doublecheck your work before sending it off. 

Following these medical writing tips will help you avoid some of the common pitfalls that many medical writers fall into when they start out in medical communications. If you found these tips helpful, please take a moment to share the article with others who may benefit from it. Do you have other useful tips that could help fellow medical communicators? Let us know in the comments!