Can We Do More To Measure Our Value?

True or false:

Well-trained medical communicators bring value to the teams with whom they work.

I hope you answered true because that’s the right answer.

The key adjective of course is well-trained.

3 Steps to Showcasing Your Medical Writing Career

This article is based on content written by Kelly Schrank, MA, ELS, and presented by John West Hadley at the AMWA Medical Writing & Communication Conference. It was originally published in the AMWA Journal.

Making sure you move ahead in your medical writing career calls for finding opportunities to create visibility for your skills and achievements and presenting yourself and your work in the best light. This means showcasing your value not only to potential new employers and clients, but also to your current employer in order to justify your salary and position yourself for advancement.

A structured and systematic approach can be effective, starting with these three steps.

Asking the Right Questions: Developing Better Discovery Skills

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.

What Are Soft Skills and Why Are They Important?

This article was originally published in the AMWA Journal.

You can write. That’s why they want you. You have experience writing the types of materials they need: regulatory documents, continuing medical education activities, promotional education materials, journal articles. That’s why they want you. You specialize in the central nervous system or metabolic disorders or cancer, and you know all the regulations and guidelines and American Medical Association style rules. That’s why they want you. This experience and training, and these skills, are the technical proficiencies you possess.

Medical Writing Trends You Need to Know About

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.

Edit Smart...Edit Fast! Tips For Editing Productivity

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.