By: Ina Nikolaeva
One career that science PhD’s have only recently been made aware of is the Medical Writer. I myself only found out about this entire career path about a year before I graduated, even though I quickly realized it was word-for-word my dream job description. If you want a more in-depth summary of how I ended up deciding that MW was for me, please read the short paragraph at the end of this post, titled, “My Personal Decision-Making Process”
Who should you be to be happy as an MW?
First of all, and quite obviously, you should enjoy writing. And I mean, REALLY enjoy it. You will have days or weeks where it is 80%-90% of what you do. If you dread writing, or get writer’s block, or (and this is really important) get sensitive and defensive around any corrections, stop right here. Turn back. Find another career path. As an MW, you are writing something that someone else will call their own – i.e. if you get comments during the multiple mandatory rounds of reviews (which can involve as many as 15-20 people), whether scientific or stylistic, you are expected to implement them. You definitely get to have a personal style, and often have to make creative choices as a writer, but if your supervisor or the client doesn’t like what you’ve done, it is your responsibility to adapt accordingly. It therefore comes as no surprise that you should also already be good at writing; if you don’t already have a solid control of grammar, style, and sentence structure, you won’t have time to learn those things on the job. Don’t worry, almost all job application processes for MW positions require writing tests. If you are consistently not passing multiple writing tests, this is a very good indicator that your writing style may not be suited to medical communications and will need more work.
Other characteristics that you will need are, obviously, a scientific background, and at least some ability to communicate verbally/via e-mail. It helps a lot to be detail-orientated and downright pedantic. You also need a healthy dose of perseverance – some documents will generate so many comments and requested edits that you end up with 8 or 10 drafts before everyone is satisfied. And here, the term “documents” can include anything from a slide deck to a manuscript to just a single 500-word abstract.
What do you learn on the job?
On the job, you likely will start off doing some light writing, but ideally you must immediately begin absorbing information about the drug and disease you are working on. Just as importantly, you start learning about the client – what kind of writing approaches they prefer vs what has failed in the past, as well as what quantity of input is expected of you. If you make the same mistakes over and over again, then you are either too obstinate to change your ways or too inflexible to do so, and this may not be the career path for you. Keep in mind that MedComms companies don’t just do the writing – they also consult on messaging, publication planning, and other strategic initiatives. As you gain experience, you may be able to participate in such projects, and it helps to have paid attention in the past to see which strategies worked for various drugs, and which didn’t.
(As an aside, a good MedComms company would never put the same MW, or even writers on the same MW team, to work on two drugs that are in direct competition with each other.)
Finally, you learn to work with your team. Your team can be organized in several ways, but likely there will be at least one senior person directly responsible for teaching you the ropes (and editing all of your early kindergarten attempts at doing medical writing). While eventually you are striving to get to a point where you can write something and send it off without needing someone to quality-control all of your output, your team is usually available to proof things that you feel “iffy” about. Some agencies have separate editing teams that get into the nitty-gritty details, like comma vs colon vs semicolon, and using the correct dash (there are three), but in order to minimize the time editors spend on your document (and then your time in making the suggested corrections), you should be able to pick this stuff up rather quickly on your own.
My personal decision-making process
I had already been gravitating towards writing. I enjoyed writing my papers/posters/talks much more than I liked doing the bench work for them. I was also already consistently receiving positive critique on my writing. I was also, at this point, actively and voluntarily participating in the iJOBS blog, both as a writer and as an editor.
I’m not quite sure where I heard the term “Medical Writer” first, but once I encountered it and researched it, it sounded perfect. I was also pretty sure that while I would gladly accept an MW position with a pharma company, it sounded as if MW at a MedComms agency would be a better fit. I also eventually connected, through other friends, to two people who had made what seemed at the time a farfetched, almost mythical transition out of academia and into medical writing. Once I knew it was possible, I dedicated my first round of “Serious Jobhunting” almost exclusively to MW positions, as well as some Technical Writer and Medical Editor positions. I ended up with 2 job offers – one for a Marketing/Technical Writer with a biotech/pharma company and one for a Medical Writer with a MedComms agency I had been super-excited for. I immediately accepted the latter.