Flexibility is one of the biggest things that attracted me to the world of medical writing and medical communications (med comms).
As a parent to two small children, career flexibility was a high priority when I was identifying a suitable post-academic career.
Remote working and flexible hours have been a mainstay of med comms long before the pandemic hit.
In fact, you don’t even need an employer to have a successful med comms career. There are many who have set up their own businesses either as a freelancer or by scaling up and establishing their own independent med comms agencies.
I was “in business!”
My family and I moved countries prior to the pandemic. I had to leave my med comms job in London and so I decided to give business a try. I set up as a freelance medical writer (MW) in Ireland. This helped bridge an income gap, whilst I explored career options in my new home city of Dublin.
The experience was enlightening and I was pleasantly surprised to discover just how easy it was to set up a business and find work as a freelance MW, once you’ve got a few years of medical writing experience under your belt and some industry contacts.
After 6 months of freelancing experience, I started to wonder what life would be like inside a pharma giant, so I joined Novartis. But the freelancing experience assured me that I always have it as a safety net fall back on should circumstances ever dictate that I need to in the future. This is a very reassuring thing to have in your professional life.
Whilst my own stint in the freelancing world was very short, I thought it would be interesting to learn more about what it takes to run a long-term successful business as a freelance MW.
To learn more, I interviewed Dr Rina Vekaria Passmore, who has been a MW since 2002 and switched from employed MW to freelancer a few times in her career, most recently 3 years ago. I asked Rina about her journey into medical writing and what it takes to achieve long-term success as a freelance MW.
What got you into medical writing?
I was a postdoc who was keen to leave academia because I didn’t want to live with the constant fear of grants coming to an end. I also had doubts if being in the lab was right for me. I found it quite frustrating when experiments didn’t work or they’d work once and then not repeat. Science is never 100%. Then I’d also find it frustrating when I’d present my results and someone would come up with something that I hadn’t thought of that needed to be tested as well. So all in all, I don’t think I was cut out for a career in research. The postdoc salary wasn’t great either. All these things added up and it became clear that I had to leave academia.
I started looking around for a suitable new career. Initially, I considered working as a patent attorney, but this would take another 5 years or so of exams and training. In hindsight, this was a good thing because I don’t think I had the right personality for that challenging and competitive career.
I reflected on past experiences: When I was writing up my PhD thesis I didn’t find it as hard as many of my peers did. It dawned on me that many others absolutely hated the process of writing their PhD thesis, and I didn’t.
Also when I was defending the thesis, my examiners asked “Did your supervisor write the thesis for you?” One of the examiners said that it was very well written and he really enjoyed reading it. He told me he normally doesn’t manage to get through a thesis quickly, but with mine, he’d finished it in two sittings.
So I thought to myself “if I enjoyed writing my thesis and my examiners enjoyed reading it, then perhaps a writing career might be the right thing for me!” At that point, I knew that I wanted to get into medical writing.
After many writing tests, interviews, and even turning down a few offers, I landed a job as a MW at Parexel, a clinical research organisation with a communications arm.
Why did you decide to become a freelance MW?
I enjoyed life at Parexel. In just four years, I was promoted from an entry level position to a principle MW. At this point I started a family.
After I had my two children, I was freelancing on and off for six years until I reached a point where I felt I was ready to upskill and develop new industry contacts. My story is a great example of how flexible a medical writing career can be. Freelancing as MW is a place I knew I could keep going back to whenever I chose.
So I took another employed position, this time at a med comms agency, Envision Pharma, where I worked for another 4 years. Eventually however, I craved more variety with my career in terms of project types and therapeutic areas. From prior experience, I knew that freelancing could offer me this, so I returned to self-employment once again.
What are the advantages of working as a freelance MW?
From a professional perspective, I get to work on more therapy areas, with different clients, and ensure variety in the types of projects I do. The biggest advantage of freelancing for me is the variety of work.
From a personal perspective, I can choose the way that I work and have a lot more flexibility than as an employee. For example, I don’t feel guilty if I decide to start later one day, take an extended walk at lunchtime, or do a school run. Working for myself, I’m able to make these lifestyle choices and work around them a lot more easily.
My work is my time. I charge for the hours I work and I get paid for the hours that I do. If I work at a weekend I charge for it, and likewise if I’ve worked extra time in the evenings, I charge for it. On the down sides, I do not get paid sick leave, contributions towards a pension, or health insurance.
Then there’s the ‘running of the business side’ to working as a freelance MW, which I didn’t have to think about as an employee. For example, I need to consider pricing, and the tax implications of my work. However, I use an accountant to help me with the tax side of the business.
What’s your top advice to get started as a freelance MW?
Get varied employment experience first:
It’s best to have had exposure as an employed MW to gain the experience needed to produce industry standard work.
Make sure you’ve worked on a variety of projects to be better prepared for whatever work might come your way. Ideally, experience in 4 main areas: Medical education, publications, complete sales, and public relations work.
Experience in all of these should stand you in good stead for starting your own business.
Generate a client pool:
Prior industry experience also allows you to develop an important network of industry contacts with whom to start your business.
Try to work as an employee for a few different companies before freelancing, if you can (ideally 2-3 as a minimum). This will help to increase your experience and most importantly, diversify your pool of contacts.
Also try to expand your client pool beyond one pharma company where possible.
Know the business basics:
As a freelance MW, you’re also a small business owner. Therefore, you need to understand the basics of how to run a business and be self-employed.
It’s best to take a business course or at least a small business accounting course. The latter is especially important if you don’t want to pay for an accountant, because you’re going to have to do all the tax returns yourself.
Have a financial safety net and a walk-away plan:
Know that your business will have busy periods and quiet periods. It’s a lot easier to freelance if you have the financial safety net!
For example, have enough savings for 3-6 month of expenditures as you start. Or having two incomes in a household (with one bringing in a steady wage), helps a lot when starting out and for the quiet periods. Also, when you want to take holidays, as a self-employed MW they’re not paid for, so remember to factor this into your household budgeting.
I think it takes the pressure off if there’s another regular income coming in to pay the bills, which can help give you a little more flexibility in terms of down time. On the other hand, for those living as a single household, have a “walk-away” timeline for an employed position if business dries up for an extended period.
Considering a career as a MW (freelance or employed)? Pop any questions you have in the comments section below, Rina and I would be delighted to help…
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