Medical Communications 101: Your Questions About Medical Writing Answered by a Medical Writer

What is medical writing?

Medical writing is an essential part of modern healthcare. Medical writing encompasses a variety of writing tasks that are performed in the course of creating a variety of medical and healthcare-related communications or documents. These documents may include articles for medical journals, white papers, clinical trial protocols and reports, regulatory documents, patient brochures, presentations (in the industry, you might often hear them referred to as “slide decks”) to educate healthcare professionals, and much more. It allows doctors to provide comprehensive and accessible medical information to their patients. It also allows pharmaceutical companies to effectively communicate with doctors, other healthcare professionals, patients, regulatory agencies (like the FDA), and insurance companies thus improving their promotional, marketing, and outreach strategies. Medical writing is also becoming more important to patients, as an ever-growing amount of medical data and information becomes available to the public and healthcare becomes more patient-centric. 

Are medical writers in demand?

Medical writing is a lucrative career that has steadily grown over the past few decades. There is a constant demand for qualified medical writers who can write and edit medical and pharmaceutical documents such as scientific, regulatory, and marketing applications, slide decks, monographs, medical devices’ product information, medical guidelines, protocols, and more. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic when hiring freezes and layoffs have been common in many fields,  medical writing jobs have continued to grow in number. The field is expected to see continued growth, given the expansion of the healthcare industry and the demand for effective communication of large troves of medical and healthcare-related information.

What does a medical writer do exactly? What do their responsibilities look like?

A medical writer performs a variety of tasks to help a medical communications agency or a pharmaceutical company create educational and marketing materials to meet its needs. These tasks may include conducting research and analysis of data, creating patient brochures, medical education materials, and scientific publications, engaging with clinicians or medical experts, fact-checking, and much more. Today, medical writing is a very broad term. The job description of medical writers may range from drafting and editing scientific publications to organizing and implementing multimillion dollar medical education and marketing campaigns.

Medical writers work closely with teams of professionals with expertise in a variety of fields such as medicine, research, marketing, and regulatory affairs – as a medical writer you may interact and work with other medical writers, content strategists, medical editors, graphic designers, project managers, and other specialists on a regular basis, from the stage of creating the first draft of a piece of medical content, which may subsequently undergo several edits, revisions, and iterations before final submission. 

While a medical writer will coordinate with and likely be supported by your team during these steps, the medical writer is responsible for managing their own writing assignments, completing them to the specifications of the client, sending them back for review, revising the content and resubmitting it within stipulated deadlines. In many cases, you can expect to be working on multiple projects for multiple clients, potentially at the same time. Therefore, the ability (and discipline) to juggle multiple projects and achieve a level of familiarity/basic knowledge across multiple complex topics as well as an attention to detail (eg, spelling, grammar) are important skills for a medical writer. 

How do I become a medical writer? Can I work as a freelance medical writer? What are some examples of medical communication jobs?

If you have got a background in science, have good communication skills, and are looking for a career with a good earning potential, you might be interested in medical writing. As a medical writer, you’ll specialize in writing the scientific and medical documents that health care professionals, hospitals, pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical device companies, and other medical organizations (eg, contract research organizations or CROs) need for their internal and external communications.

Becoming a medical writer is a little different than becoming a regular writer. If you are a science or healthcare major, you are at an advantage, as the vast majority of medical writers have an advanced degree in these fields. Usually you are hired by a company that specializes in medical communications, such as medical communications agency, or by a pharmaceutical company or medical/contract research organization. You may also choose to go the freelance route, but each approach has its pros and cons: If you work for a medical communications agency or as an in-house medical writer for a pharma company, you will likely be in a salaried position and would not need to worry about getting steady work. If you work as a freelancer/independent contractor for an agency, you will be responsible for finding work and you will often be paid a rate per hour or per project. Your compensation will be a percentage of the amount the client pays the agency for these services, so it will be up to you to find work on a regular basis. Once you gain more experience in the industry, you may be able to negotiate the rate of compensation and can justify charging higher rates. An independent contractor may have more flexibility in the projects they choose and may earn more per hour or project, but it comes at the cost of a steady paycheck and job security.

Medical writers work in a variety of capacities in the health care and pharmaceutical industry, including in-house at medical device companies and pharmaceutical companies, medical communications agencies, public relations agencies, educational institutions, and hospitals. You can work as medical writers, fact checkers, medical editors, scientific directors, and more. Depending on the company/agency, the titles and responsibilities of these jobs can vary. Many medical writing jobs are available for contract/freelance writers (especially if they have considerable experience in the field). Both office-based and remot medical writing jobs exist, but ever since the COVID-19 pandemic, many medical communications agencies have embraced work from home models, increasing the chances of being able to work remotely and for companies that are not based in your geographical location.

What qualifications do you need to be a medical writer?

For most medical writers, a Bachelor degree is the minimum educational qualification necessary for employment in the field. However, an advanced biomedical degree, such as a PhD, MD, PharmD, or a Master’s degree in the biomedical field can certainly help writers get hired for more senior roles as well as earn more – in fact, the vast majority of medical writing professionals have one of these advanced degrees. 

Where and how can I develop medical writing skills? What are some helpful resources available for someone interested in medical communications?

Aspiring medical writers—especially those who are new to the field—may wonder where and how they can  develop medical writing skills.  Most of the time, these skills are developed on the job, since the acquisition of medical writing skills is rarely taught in medical school or biology/biomedical graduate programs.  Whether you are a new grad or have years of experience, it is always good practice to keep up with new developments in the field and learn new skills that are required to keep your career current.

There are various ways to develop medical writing skills. For example, you can enroll in a program that teaches medical writing. Several universities offer such programs, but pursuing such courses/programs may mean spending more time and money. As mentioned above, most medical writers learn many of the requisite skills on the job, but there are are certain elements from your graduate training that can help you stand out from a pool of candidates in the job market and make for a smooth start.

While most graduate programs in science may not necessarily have courses that teach medical writing, transferable skills you acquire during graduate or medical training can benefit you considerably as you embark on a medical writing career. For instance, scientific writing skills (acquired by writing grants, designing posters, and creating slide decks to present your research), analytical skills (honed by activities like performing literature searches, generating scientific ideas, gaining an understanding of statistics, interpretation of research data, analysis of tables and graphs, to name a few), the ability to collaborate and work well with a team (gained by working with lab members and research collaborators), the ability to manage multiple projects (achieved by juggling your thesis research and other side projects, for example), are all valuable qualities that you can leverage from your graduate degree to be successful in medical communications.

Professional organizations, like the American Medical Writers Association (AMWA), are often great resources for medical writers in all stages of their careers – these organizations offer excellent opportunities for meeting other medical writers, networking, and professional development. Becoming a member of the local chapter of AMWA (or similar organizations in your region) could be a good option to access several professional resources for medical writers. Another good resource to learn more about  improve medical writing skills by following reputed websites related to medical and science writing that provide tips and advice on medical communications and writing skills. Blogs and podcasts from other established medical writers are also good places to help you become familiar with the industry. 

What are the different types of medical writing?

There are many different types of medical writing. The most common forms of medical writing include medical journalism, medical education and publications, and regulatory writing. Medical journalism is similar to general journalism in that it involves writing articles about medical topics for general readers or lay audience. Medical education (including promotional medical education) involves writing educational and promotional materials that teach medical professionals about particular health conditions and specific drugs. Medical publications may include reviews and articles on academic journals as well as abstracts and posters for clinical conferences. Regulatory writing is the process of creating written materials that comply with the regulations set by government agencies like the US FDA (regulatory submission documents) – regulatory writers typically work in this niche and they may either work in-house for pharmaceutical companies and contract research organizations or for medical communication agencies.

Is medical writing the same as scientific writing?

Medical writing, in the broad sense, is a subset of scientific writing. Scientific writing encompasses writing on medical topics as well as other scientific topics such as basic science, engineering, and more. Some of the types of writing that fall under the scientific writing umbrella include academic writing (publications, grants), science journalism (for newspapers, magazines and websites), medical writing, and technical writing – sometimes with overlap among the various subsets.  Medical writing, which focuses on the healthcare industry, can be considered a specialty within scientific writing.  One of the main differences between the two are the target audience and the intended outcome:  Medical writing aims to inform/educate audiences that include public health and healthcare professionals, clinicians, payers who provide drug access (eg, insurance companies), and patients. Scientific writing – in a stricter sense – focuses mostly on academic audiences, to review scientific research or to communicate scientific concepts to scientists or researchers.

Hope this article provided you some answers about medical communications. If it helped you learn more about medical writing (or if you have additional questions), please let us know in the comments. Thank you for reading!