As a freelance medical writer, I’m always learning new ways to ensure my clients’ daily operations run smoothly. From health and wellness businesses to continuing medical education (CME) providers and pharmaceutical manufacturers, everyone in the health and medical industry needs an excellent writer in their corner – and today, we will talk about why that is.
Clear communication is so crucial, yet we often overlook how vital medical writers are to keeping the well-oiled machine of healthcare running smoothly, from drug development to patient care.
So, how do medical writers help your business? Let’s discuss the different roles medical writers play and what makes freelancers, in particular, valuable to your team.
How Important Is Medical and Healthcare Writing?
To get a better view of just how indispensable medical writers are to any business in healthcare, consider that effective medical communications benefit every level of care.
Medical writers deliver groundbreaking research in academic journals, teach physicians how to implement new findings in practice and communicate to patients what these new findings mean about their health.
Medical writers are the throughline – from principal investigator to physician to patient. Healthcare, as we know it, depends on the roles they play and the wide variety of writing skills a medical writer can bring to your business.
The road to becoming a medical writer is challenging, and it’s often made more difficult by the fact there’s so much to choose from within the medical writing realm. Many healthcare writers choose to specialise or offer a handful of services that their clients have repeatedly found beneficial.
Today, let’s take a deeper look at 5 types of writing that can support your healthcare business.
1. Medical Writers Facilitate Communication for Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs)
One of many roles medical writers can play is ensuring clear communication and documentation for key opinion leader (KOL) or steering committee meetings. KOLs are influential professionals with expertise or influence in a specific field.
Medical writers are invaluable for private pharmaceutical companies and nonprofit organisations alike in the healthcare industry. They are often used for steering committee/KOL meetings about clinical trials or drug development, but they are also useful for non-profits that may have steering committee/KOL meetings about public health initiatives.
If you conduct clinical trials, you put a lot of energy into recruiting clinical trial leaders, securing funding, and setting up steering committees in the first place.
While the focus is on the experts you’ve spent precious time and resources recruiting for a steering committee/KOL meeting, there’s a medical writer who’s taking minutes, preparing agendas and meeting presentation materials, and sending out reports afterward to ensure everyone is on the same page.
2. Medical Writing Makes Information More Accessible to Patients
Every healthcare organisation has a responsibility to deliver accurate information to patients. A professional medical writer can take complex research and distil findings into actionable advice for patients and consumers. Healthcare organisations also have more opportunities to reach their patients, from traditional print advertising to digital ads.
Healthcare marketing is often used to raise patient awareness about health issues, such as cancer testing, opportunities for clinical trial participation, or the release of a new HIV drug.
With an expert freelance medical writer in your pocket, you can take advantage of the information age and raise patient awareness with informative, clear messaging that builds trust.
3. Medical Writers Can Keep Providers Up to Date on Best Practices
Many successful freelance medical writers do some form of CME writing, whether it’s creating needs assessments or developing educational materials based on best adult learning practices. Without medical writers who effectively create engaging CME materials and evolve with the healthcare landscape, providers may not be up to date on new research and best practices.
Successful medical writers understand client expectations and deliver on them so providers can keep caring for patients at the highest level. CME medical writers also understand the regulations on CME and the need for fair and balanced deliverables, free of bias, in a way other writers may not.
4. Professional Writers Craft Articles, Blogs, and Whitepapers
Someone in the physio space asked me recently if blogs still mattered. You can guess what I said because you’re reading this.
Well-researched, evidence-backed blogs and articles establish healthcare businesses as thought leaders and authorities in their specific niches. Blogs can help drive organic traffic to websites and bring in new leads, which are essential for business growth – and healthcare is business, no way around it.
White Papers can have a similar effect as less “in your face” marketing materials. These often identify a gap in the current literature and seek to address it with your specific solution, making them a perfect way to establish your business as authoritative while marketing your product or solution.
An experienced medical writer can ideate, create, and plan out how these types of content writing fit into a marketing strategy for your healthcare business.
Insider tip: It will usually cost you more to hire freelance writers than it will in-house writers – but keep in mind that you’re paying for their experience, training, and the overhead costs in-house writers don’t need to worry about, like time off.
5. Freelance Medical Writers are Masters of Their Craft
Last but not least, freelance medical writers are very good at what they do. There are benefits to hiring a freelance writer instead of a writer who’s only worked in-house, although there are certainly benefits to both. (And that’s speaking as someone who has done both for many years!)
Consider that freelance medical writers:
- have built their own businesses
- have a background in academia, clinical care, or medical communications, likely with several years of experience behind them
- likely have experience across several types of medical writing, even if they’ve niched down, and have probably worked across multiple therapeutic areas
- have a wide variety of experience with different types of projects and people.
You gain the benefit of working with someone who is adaptable, has spent years honing their craft through experience, is willing to work hard, and can meet your deadlines (or they wouldn’t have made it this far). They’re likely willing to learn and eager to work on your project, even if it’s a little different from what they’ve done before.
Set Yourself Up For Success When You Work with a Freelance Writer
I’ve seen and written everything from healthcare marketing materials, to public relations and patient advocacy. If you’re in need of a health communications specialist, it’s time we sit down for a chat.
There are a lot of healthcare writers out there. I’m one of them, and I have over a decade of experience across these mediums of writing and more under my belt.
Let’s put it to use for your communications needs. Book a call with me, and let’s discuss how I can help you succeed.
My name is Rachel Pascal. I’m an accomplished and versatile freelance medical and health writer with more than a decade of experience writing content to educate healthcare professionals, empower patients, communicate research findings, and raise brand + disease awareness.
- Click CONTACT above to drop me a line
- Read some samples in my writing portfolio
- Check out my latest blog about what to look for when hiring a freelance medical writer
