Millions of people log in to one or more social media sites every day, and patients and families are increasingly seeking health information online. This merging of digital media and health care realms makes it imperative that health care organizations, clinicians, researchers, and medical communicators engage with audiences on social media channels.
Medical writers and editors are often the core contributors on writing projects, and they need a solid understanding of grammar, punctuation, usage, and style.
In writing, style refers to the preferred way we express ourselves in writing and how we represent an organization’s identity or a company’s brand. Style guides or manuals include myriad instructions about word choice, grammar, abbreviations, citations, and other details that create and maintain an identity for a publication or text.
Every medical communicator finds their own path to success.
Some discover their passion for medical communication through skills and education programs: formal degrees, certificates, certification, or a combination of the above. Others build on a foundation of a medical degree or research background and pivot into medical writing. Still others begin as journalists writing about health and medicine and realize they have what it takes to become a professional medical writer.
What are some of the avenues that exist to advance in this rewarding career?
Visual communication is a way of helping audiences grasp key concepts in medicine and science. Excellent visuals enhance key points and resonate with readers.
There are many ways to implement and integrate visuals into your medical communication work without breaking budgets.
Read on to find out how medical communicators find tips for using graphics, resources for royalty-free images, and tools for creating infographics.
Can medical communicators share an article from a medical journal with colleagues? What about reusing a graph from a published paper? What is fair use, and how do you know the difference between noncommercial and commercial use for licensing?
The answers to these questions are not cut and dried. Many people become confused when navigating various types of permissions and copyright protections, but there are some basics that can be helpful, whether you are a freelancer or an employee as a professional medical communicator.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and the subcategory machine learning (ML) are evolving quickly, and regulators around the world are working to respond to new opportunities while mitigating potential risks involving the technology.
With so much digital content vying for our attention, medical communicators need to harness the power of visual communication. Otherwise, high-quality health care messaging could end up buried in a sea of social media reels and misleading posts.
Today’s medical communicators have access to tools for creating engaging visual content. Visual elements such as graphs, maps, infographics, and images can keep health care content visible to target audiences while elevating health care communication in significant ways.
If artificial intelligence (AI) can read diagnostic tests, identify cancer cells, and construct cohorts for clinical trials, can it write medical journal articles and create regulatory documents? In other words, can AI be a medical writer?
No, it cannot. Primarily because most major medical journals reserve the task of authorship for humans because AI is a tool to augment, not substitute for, human intelligence.
This is not to say that AI can’t be helpful in medical writing. AI is a promising technology transforming entire industries, and medical communication is no exception. Generative AI, such as generative pre-trained transformers (GPTs) and chatbots, can be harnessed to enhance the efficiency of medical writers while connecting us to the vast storehouses of knowledge that exist.
It is possible to use AI’s tools responsibly and ethically in the service of medicine and science.
Language is powerful and can be used to illuminate, explain, heal, hurt, include, or exclude.
The English language is evolving constantly, and medical communicators need to stay abreast of best practices. Inclusive language is one way that medical communicators can avoid bias and create a respectful climate for all people.
Health is much more than numbers, medications, or a clinical diagnosis. A person’s health is affected by their environment and their lived experiences.
Welcome to the busy life of a medical communicator. Medical writers and editors are busy professionals who juggle multiple projects, teams, and tasks.
Medical writers are key personnel in the health care and biomedical research fields. They communicate scientific research findings and information about diseases and treatments to a variety of audiences: health care professionals, regulatory authorities, sales representatives, patients, caregivers, and more.
Medical writers make scientific information accessible for readers and empower people to make informed decisions about their health.
Clinical consensus statements and clinical practice guidelines are among the documents used to ensure that patients are receiving the best care possible and that clinical decisions reflect the opinions of the experts who are invested in excellent clinical outcomes.
In other words, consensus statements are created when experts provide guidance for medical issues, even when the evidence is still being gathered, whereas clinical practice guidelines are developed based on high-level evidence.
AMWA acknowledges the contributions of Crystal Herron PHD, ELS, as lead content developer, and Michelle Sauer Gehring PHD, ELS, for peer review, in the development of this AMWA resource.
As the world moves in a more interconnected, digital, and collaborative direction, best practices in authorship have become less straightforward.
Medical writers may find themselves contributing to manuscripts in many ways and might encounter problematic examples of ghost authorship, gift authorship, and guest authorship.
In recent years, medical communicators have been creating documents called plain language summaries (PLS) to help patients, caregivers, and the general public to better understand the latest scientific findings and clinical trial results.
The terms plain language summaries (PLS), plain language summaries (PLS) for clinical trials, plain language summaries for publication (PLSP), and plain language writing can be confusing — and are sometimes used interchangeably. Although each term has a different application, the documents share a single goal: to work toward inclusion and empowerment of nonexpert audiences.
What’s your style? Are you an AMA person? An APA aficionado? Does your employer use a house style guide?
For freelancers, perhaps the more important question is: What writing style guide does your client want you to use?
We do not live in a world where everyone — regardless of race, gender, gender identity, disability status, or income level — has the same access to high-quality health care, adequate housing, or nutrition. As a result, health outcomes are vastly unequal, causing marginalized populations to experience lower life expectancies and higher levels of preventable diseases.
We live in an increasingly globalized world, and the field of medical communication is no exception. In fact, most medical writers and editors are creating materials for a global scientific audience.
A number of helpful resources, online and in print, exist to help people write clear, translatable prose for global audiences.
There’s plenty of reason for concern about the evolving role of artificial intelligence (AI) in almost every aspect of our culture and economy. In medical communication, concerns about the increased use of AI intersect with issues on authorship.
Fake political news has dominated the headlines over the past few years, but the proliferation of science denial and misinformation about health and medicine has also caused widespread concern.
Are you a regulatory medical writer who is concerned about proving your mettle?
Regulatory medical writers play a critical role in the drug development and approval processes. Yet their role is often misunderstood and undervalued.
Scientists are having a rough go of it right now. They are being harassed at record levels, especially for sharing public health information related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
It’s gotten so bad that scientists on Twitter are “heading for the exit.” In this climate, how can medical communicators increase the public’s trust in science?
Are you prepared for the next generation of science communication?
These days, inaccurate science can spread online like an out-of-control pandemic, but medical communicators are often the first line of defense against medical disinformation.
By paying attention to the advances in technology and the needs of particular audiences, medical writers and editors can help create and disseminate materials that will help consumers assess conflicting claims.
By Robert J. Bonk, PhD
Medical communicators need a level of conversance with terminology and concepts in the field of health economics as cost becomes an outcome for treatment decisions. This blog introduces the fundamentals of health economics to medical communicators.
As health care costs continue to rise, medical communicators can play a role in health care policy and practice by participating in Health Economics and Outcomes Research (HEOR)—a growing field with opportunities for medical communicators.
What is HEOR, and how does it contribute to scientific knowledge? What are the guidelines for reporting results of HEOR studies?
No one is perfect.
Even the best medical writers make the occasional mistake. That is why it is important to use every tool at our disposal to make sure that each project’s content, style, and format are high quality.
Storytelling is the basis for human connection, with oral and written traditions stretching back for millennia.
Our brains have evolved to respond to stories.
It is not only patients and consumers who respond to excellent stories. Scientists and health care professionals are also humans with emotional and intellectual attachments to engaging narratives.
One of the most useful acronyms in a medical communicator’s toolkit is IMRAD.
It stands for the sections of a scientific research paper: Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion.
By Stephen N. Palmer, PhD, ELS, Texas Heart Institute
Use these EndNote tips and tricks to save time and solve problems when citing book chapters, making global text edits, maintaining journal title words and abbreviations, collaborating with other users, and correcting erroneous page numbers and corrupted in-text citations. This Mini Tutorial describes tips for EndNote X7. Exact steps may differ for later versions.
In medical communication, it is critical to ensure that documents and other materials are free from mistakes, inconsistencies, and errors. The stakes are high, and even though few of us reach perfection, it is important to utilize all the tools at our disposal to get as close as we can.
Writers and editors with a passion for medicine and science are exploring opportunities in the growing field of medical writing.
The explosive growth of health care technology, pharmaceuticals, and other related areas creates multiple possible entry points for writers and editors who possess the skills and qualifications to enter and advance in the field.
Every quality document requires the attention of a thorough editor, and medical and scientific documents require extra care to uphold scientific rigor.
Copyright law is complicated, and we’re not legal experts.
However, one of the most important aspects of copyright law as it pertains to medical communicators is called “fair use.”
In general, copyright protects the intellectual property of creators like artists and authors, but there is an important exception made when material is used for educational purposes or for other reasons that distinguish it from a profit-generating use.
Ethical behavior is important in any profession.
People take different paths in their journeys to become medical writers. Some are scientists and clinicians who come to the field with medical or scientific backgrounds. Others are professional writers who want to leverage their background in communications to write about science and medicine.
Imagine a toolbox without a hammer.
Medical communicators have toolboxes too. Visuals, such as tables and graphs, belong in that toolbox. We are telling scientific stories, and data are important elements in many of those stories.
How are you with numbers?
It’s important for all medical communicators to master the essentials of medical statistics. Medical writers are not the ones carrying out statistical tests or procedures, but they may be responsible for interpreting and reporting statistics.
When people are looking to establish or further a career as a medical writer, they often have questions about the differences between earning a certificate in medical writing and certification, which means earning the Medical Writer Certified (MWC®) credential.
If you’re a new medical writer, you might be wondering how to set yourself up for a long, successful career. Fortunately, there are many ways to build a strong foundation: exploring apprenticeships, mastering medical writing styles, and earning an Essential Skills Certificate, to name a few.
If you’re a new medical writer, you may wonder which skills are essential for success. Whether you choose to write regulatory documents, promotional content, patient education materials, or journal articles, you’ll need a strong writing foundation. Part of that foundation includes learning to understand, write, speak—in general, to communicate!—using the jargon of the field: medical terminology.
This blog is based on an article written by Misty Bailey, MA, ELS(D), Kirsten Benson, EdD, and Anne Marie Weber‑Main, PhD, that was originally published in the AMWA Journal.
As a medical editor, your challenge is to use techniques that effectively balance the need for clarity with respect for the authors’ ideas. In other words, communication approaches need to empower authors while accomplishing the common goal of producing an easy‑to‑read piece of writing that clearly and effectively communicates the authors’ message and intent.
Many medical writers are tasked with more than crafting accurate documents. You might also need to manage projects and teams.
Part of managing medical communication includes effectively leading meetings so that they drive documents forward to successful completion.
Whether you're preparing to lead your first meeting or kicking off a new project, follow these best practices to meet your objectives. These best practices apply whether your meeting is in‑person or online.
This article was originally published in the AMWA Journal.
All of us have suffered the consequences of expensive, unasked questions in both our professional lives and our personal lives. As medical communicators, we must ask good questions to elicit information, but many of us lack adequate training in this skill. Add to that the natural reticence of some medical communicators, and it is no wonder that we walk away from interviews with subject matter experts or client meetings wishing we had remembered to ask X, Y, or Z. This article offers information as to why questions are so important, what types of questions are useful, how to strategize your questions, how to handle people answering the questions you ask them, and how to answer questions that others ask you.
This article is based on content presented by Kent Steinriede, MS, at the AMWA Medical Writing & Communication Conference. It was originally published in the AMWA Journal.
“Find out what the story is,” Kent Steinriede stressed throughout his session about the quality control (QC) review of safety narratives. Steinriede highlighted the elements of the safety narrative, source documents and tools used in QC review, and tips for best QC work.
It's fun to look back over the years and think about fashion trends that probably never should have seen the light of day. I’m thinking mullets, shoulder pads, and why not throw in bell bottoms while I’m at it.
Although fashion trends come and go, trends in medical communication usually point toward practices that are here to stay. We can’t afford to ignore industry trends if we want to remain fresh and relevant. Whether we are employees or freelances, we never want to become stale, and staying on top of business trends should be part of our jobs.
Writing and editing go hand-in-hand to create a masterpiece. A well-written article is like a fine piece of jewelry. Think of the content as the design of the jewelry and the editing as the polish. Just as a ring without polish looks like a piece of lackluster metal with a potentially beautiful gem, a poorly edited article loses its charm even if the content is strong.
A medical writing career requires being a lifelong learner and networker.
To begin working in the field, medical writers need specialized skills and knowledge to obtain jobs. Advancing in the field means constantly building on that base. In addition, professional connections are helpful in the beginning of your career and in order to advance.