Part 1: What is medical writing?

These series of articles are based on a conversation I had with a friend, who was intrigued by the possibilities of carving a career in medical writing. Our conversation had such a great impact, making him realise where his true potential lay and led to him doggedly pursuing medical writing as a career path, very successfully. It also led me to realise that there’s not much out there in terms of actual on-ground information about what this field is all about, and I decided to fill in the gaps here.

These articles are directed to all those, who like my friend, want to explore exciting career possibilities that involve 2 varied fields- science and writing!

What is medical writing?

Medical writing involves a unique skill that is a combination of medical or scientific knowledge and writing skills. It is an art that combines a talent for creative writing along with an eye for science and research related processes and details.

Everyday medical writers document, detail, elaborate, concise, craft and create documents into a format that can ultimately improve healthcare outcomes and help in saving lives.

The constant innovation in healthcare into digital therapeutics, telemedicine, devices and services adds to the ever-evolving role of a medical writer, who seem to be constantly in demand to convey online and offline information to HCPs (health care professionals) and the general public.

What does the process of medical writing involve?

Medical writing is a profession that indirectly impacts the lives of people and hence correctly conveyed information should always be the number one priority.

Whatever may be the output, the first step in medical writing involves thorough research.

Research on the topic or disease condition or drug and its impact on the human system forms the crux of any good medical content.  Research involves plenty of reading, understanding, analysing and applying information in a logical fashion.

Here are certain broad rules to medical writing. I will be discussing each of these in further detail throughout the series.

• Use of medical words or jargon: Medical professionals will certainly have no difficulty in understanding these, but you would definitely need to tone down the jargon if the target audience comprises of lay people – the catch here is to write content that is medically correct, yet does not overwhelm a person who has little or no medical knowledge.
• Credibility: This is a major hurdle while creating content. The best way to ensure credibility is to correctly source or reference your work from credible sites and research papers.
• Root out plagiarism: Plagiarism haunts the dreams of all editors these days.  As medical writers, trust can be built if the content you write is authentic and original, not plagiarised.
• Keeping the reader enthused: Whoever may be the target audience, your job as a medical writer is to keep them reading. Use quotes, dialogues, highlight boxes, images, gifs, graphs and charts – to keep your audience hooked.
• Keep your content concise: There’s no point using long, winding sentences or writing pages of content for something that can be easily explained in a couple of bullet points or a good infographic. Keep in mind, people these days have short attention spans.

In the end, medical writing is all about being your authentic self, expressing what you want to share with the benefit of the reader at heart with a specified purpose in mind.

Stay tuned for Part 2 – ‘Types of medical content writing.’

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