If you’re considering becoming a medical writer, you might have questions about your next career choice.
A common question many potential medical writers have is what medical writers do. It’s a good question: medical writing encompasses several industries within healthcare, including continuing education, pharmaceuticals, clinical trial regulations, marketing, and more.
To briefly sum it up, medical writers take complex information and educate, inform or promote to audiences of laypeople, physicians, and other stakeholders. For example, they may be required to share information about a particular disease, market specific products, present new research, or summarise regulatory procedures like how a clinical trial was conducted.
What medical writers actually do day-to-day – and what qualifications they need to succeed – depends heavily on what types of medical writing they decide to pursue.
Let’s explore how to go down the career path of medical writing a little further.
What is Medical Writing?
Medical writing is a specialist type of writing aimed at healthcare providers, regulatory authorities, academics, and other medical professionals. Medical writing demands skilled storytelling abilities and in-depth knowledge of specific medical or health concepts to convey new information to audiences invested in emerging information.
Medical writers are also needed to write for audiences of care providers, shareholders, clinical trial leaders, and researchers. Sometimes, medical writers may need to write in a way that markets a specific approach or product (promotional); other times, they’ll need to maintain a fair and unbiased perspective (non-promotional).
Examples of Medical Writing
There are so many things a medical writer can do, from writing advertorials to writing needs assessments for medical education providers. Today, we’ll go over a few of the most common paths medical writers choose, knowing there are many more to choose from.
Regulatory Writing
Regulatory writing is a broad niche. Regulatory writers are vital members of teams advancing the production of drugs and medical devices, and most regulatory writers will need some knowledge of regulatory affairs, pharmacology, or biostatistics. However, many regulatory documents are written with subject matter expert input, so there’s rarely a need for a regulatory writer to be an expert in what they’re writing about.
Regulatory writers produce clinical regulatory documents to aid third-party reviewers. These include clinical study reports, investigator brochures, and informed consent forms. As a regulatory writer, it’s essential that what you write is as easy to understand as possible.
While a regulatory writer’s primary audience will understand acronyms and jargon, the job of a regulatory writer is to make documents easy to read. Regulatory documents are made public after product or drug approval, so readability is essential.
Medical Copywriting and PR
Medical copywriters produce marketing materials for healthcare businesses, such as large hospitals, small private practices, or pharmaceutical and medical device companies. These materials can include website writing, social media content, and advertisements / creative campaigns.
Public relations (PR) writers in the medical field manage the public perception of a healthcare business and maintain good relationships between their clients and the communities they serve. They may also write press releases about upcoming health product launches, product updates, new collaborations, or mergers.
They may also pitch journalists and other media members to secure press mentions. In the medical field, public relations writers must accurately relay information to the media to ensure it is shared correctly with the public.
Medical copywriting and PR services can be direct-to-consumer (DTC) or for a healthcare professional audience. Unlike some types of medical writing, medical copywriting and PR are needed for all audiences in the health and medical field, from patient to provider.
CME Writing
CME (Continuing Medical Education) Writing is a type of medical writing that requires medical writers to produce engaging educational material for physicians to ensure they stay up to date on best practices and are learning effectively. Different accreditation committees around the world tightly regulate CME writing. CME writers need to be familiar with CME regulations and maintain a fair and balanced perspective rather than trying to promote one approach or another. CME writers may be required to write outcomes analyses, needs assessments, or engaging educational materials for students.
Other areas you may want to explore further are:
- Patient affairs writing
- Scientific manuscript or poster writing
- Events/conferences.
What about Health Writing?
Many medical writers are daunted by the technicality of common medical writing niches or find them uninteresting.
In fact, I have a friend who found herself in this exact predicament. After a successful foray into the world of health writing, she thought upskilling would be an exciting way to earn more writing about what she loved. When she started learning about regulatory writing, she told me she knew it wasn’t for her. She enjoyed health writing much more. Which raises the question …
What exactly is health writing?
Health writing is similar to medical writing in that it deals with complex topics about health issues. However, health writing takes those complex topics and makes them easy for a general audience to understand. It covers questions about disease states, gives health advice, writes articles and social media posts, and produces marketing materials.
A good rule of thumb for medical writing vs health writing is this: if it goes to a technical audience, like a physician or researcher, it’s medical writing. If it goes to a general audience, it’s health writing.
Examples of Health Writing
Health Journalism
Health journalism demands less technical knowledge than some other medical writing niches, but it also requires a unique skill set. Like all medical writers, health journalists must be able to critically evaluate scientific information and emerging research. However, health journalists report on emerging health trends, health news (like a disease outbreak), and new findings.
Health journalists must be able to distill complex information into very readable articles—their target audience is a layperson. They also need to see where one journal article fits into an entire body of literature. Most people get their health information from health journalists, so reporting on health news can help mitigate misinformation and give people accurate insights.
Patient Education
Patient education is any content that helps patients make informed decisions about their health and provides necessary information in a clear, jargon-free manner. Patient education can be disease pages covering symptoms, causes, and treatments of different diseases on trusted websites (the National Health Service website is a good example), pamphlets a doctor hands out about disease risks or one-pagers for specific patient populations.
Patient education materials are designed to be readable and empowering for patients and their family members. They may effectively teach skills patients must learn at home, like administering insulin injections, or encourage specific behavioral changes.
Get The Medical Writing Expertise You Need on Your Next Project
If you’re looking for a versatile, seasoned professional with expertise in different types of medical and health writing for your next medical writing project, you’ve come to the right person. As a health communications specialist, I bring over a decade of health communications insight and writing experience to every project. Will yours be next?
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- Click CONTACT above to drop me a line
- Read some samples in my writing portfolio
- Check out my latest blog about what qualifications you need to get started as a medical writer
