If you enjoy writing and clinical research, don’t love bench work, and aren’t worried about giving up direct knowledge generation as part of your career – medical writing might be a good career option for you.
Medical writers (MWs) write scientific communications for academic institutes, and the biotech and pharma industries. They produce a range of documents, including publications, abstracts, patient information leaflets, regulatory documents and an array of training materials, amongst other activities.
It’s easier to start off gaining experience as an employee, but once you’re experienced and have contacts in the MW world, you can go on to freelance if desired, making this a very flexible career choice.
There is also a well-defined career progression structure and lots of jobs available in this sector. So once in, it really is an employee’s market.
However, it can be difficult to land that first, elusive job without prior experience. To make the leap into medical writing, you’ll need to secure a training post to start your career.
As an MW myself, I often get asked how did you break into this field?
In a recent podcast with the Cheeky Scientist Group (www.cheekyscientist.com), I talk about my route into the medical writing profession:
Question – How did you approach you career transition from academia?
Question – What attracted you to medical writing?
Question – What do you do as a medical writer?
– Need a second opinion? Read here about Sally’s career transition into medical writing.
– Still interested in Medical writing? If so, here are my top tips to help you get a foot in the door…
Top Tips for Getting into Medical Writing
- Use your ‘spare-time’ to get some voluntary experience (write commentaries, posts, newsletters, articles etc. in your research niche). This shows prospective employers your natural interest and aptitude for writing and that you can manage a breath of materials, (aside from the traditional academic documents – publications, abstracts, presentations, your thesis etc.)
- Join medical writing societies such as EMWA (https://www.emwa.org) and/or AMWA (https://www.amwa.org). These organisations will give you industry insights, but also demonstrate how keen you are to be an MW to prospective employers
- Attend an EMWA/AMWA meeting, or an ISMPP meeting if you can (https://www.ismpp.org), to learn about recent advancements in the industry and network with MWs
- Follow FirstMedCommsJob.com and sign up for email alerts about career events, career guides, industry-relevant news and other helpful resources
- Sign up to the Hitt list to hear about job opportunities in medical writing (http://hittmedicalwriting.com/thehittlist.html)
- Learn AMA style
- Familiarise yourself with Good Publication Practice codes of conduct (GPP3)
- Get good with Powerpoint, Word and Excel (really good). Knowing shortcuts, pivot tables, slide master etc. and generally becoming a formatting whizz, will aid you in the writing tests and will increase your productivity no end, when you eventually land your first job
Hopefully that gives you a good insight into the world of the MW and how to break-in. One last link that’s super helpful from AMWA is their MW’s toolkit:
https://www.amwa.org/page/Medical_Writer_Kit
Any other tips, advice to help people break into the MW field? Or any other questions you’d like to ask about being a MW? If so, leave a comment below or join in the conversation with our community at the BiomedBadass LinkedIn page. Please subscribe to join at:
www.biomedbadass.com/subscribe
Looking forward to hearing from you – and until next time, here’s to your future career success!
Best wishes,
Vicky
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