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Tegan Howard
Medical writers have a variety of techniques and skills to perform when writing. A quote to elaborate on and go more into detail about: “Medical writing is an esteemed profession. Every day, medical writers are detailing, documenting, and sharing news and research that is improving health outcomes and saving lives. Their roles and opportunities are always evolving, whether they’re crafting peer-reviewed articles reporting on clinical trials, marketing cutting-edge devices, educating health care professionals or even the general public about new treatments, or writing grant proposals to fund innovative research” (“Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Medical Writer”, American Medical Writers Association., 2). This quote summarizes some duties and goals that medical writers have. After reading, I understand that medical writing is a profession that a writer has to be skilled enough to document and to revise the information to accurately be able to display research and news to be reported to their audience trying to obtain the information. There are different functions of editing that medical writers have to be aware of while preparing these documents, and this is revision of information and being able to present the information in the most relevant and understanding way possible for the health concerns they are presenting in a document. The other editing skill is minor editing like grammar and punctuation. The data that they are presenting has to be edited and revised so that the statistics and numbers of the studies they are sharing are able to be understood when readers are reviewing the documents about a general health concern or condition. The information also must be ethical, and the medical writers must have marketing skills to make the documents more effective to their readers.
The second article in its abstract section in the beginning, goes further into detail about what duties medical writers have sums up the duties and strengths that a medical writer needs to accurately create and edit these documents. “Medical writing involves writing scientific documents of different types which include regulatory and research-related documents, disease or drug-related educational and promotional literature, publication articles like journal manuscripts and abstracts, content for healthcare websites, health-related magazines or news articles. The scientific information in these documents needs to be presented to suit the level of understanding of the target audience, namely, patients or general public, physicians or the regulators” ( “How to Become a Competent Medical Writer”,Sharma, Suhasini, 1.)
After reading the chosen article, “Expanding Horizons as a Medical Writer”, Clemow, David, two important medical trends I have found was, “Data visualization is now a focus, and it is now often replacing text. Structured and component authoring are becoming a reality, and I will define these for you later in the presentation” (“Expanding Horizons as a Medical Writer”, Clemow, David, 1). The trend of data visualization is something that some readers may find appealing and useful when reviewing information that is presented, I am a visual learner, so I find this method effective for me while reading. Another trend I found was, Structured and component authoring each utilize a different approach to medical writing. Structured authoring is a rules-driven – writing technique to deliver simplified, focused content that increases readability and the ability to find information” (“Expanding Horizons as a Medical Writer”, Clemow, David, 3). Structured and component authorization is delivering a piece of writing into a report and has a method of rules to follow so that the piece of writing medical writers is documenting is accurate and can perfectly display information received to report in a piece of writing.
Wei Ni
1. “Medical writing is the discipline of writing scientific documents by writers in the field of medicine (“How to Become a Competent Medical Writer” Sharma, Suhasini)”. It is the writing of some pharmaceutical regulatory documents for submission to pharmaceutical regulatory agencies and for publication by physicians or patients. Medical writing is a type of written communication that helps people address some health-related topic and can be read by anyone interested in medicine, science, or the healthcare process. “Medical writers may not be the original scientists who did the actual research, but work with the physicians/scientists involved in the generation of data, and help present the information in an appropriate manner (“How to Become a Competent Medical Writer” Sharma, Suhasini)”. Medical writers will participate in or be responsible for writing medical articles and quality control of various clinical research documents submitted to the drug regulatory department, including but not limited to: clinical research protocols, clinical research reports, investigator manuals, etc. At the same time, they will also participate in or be responsible for the establishment, development and maintenance of writing templates for clinical research protocols, clinical research reports and other related medical documents. For example, after a pharmaceutical company discovers a drug that may be able to treat a disease in laboratory research, it first needs to do various preclinical studies in animals to confirm that the drug is not toxic, and then conduct various clinical trials on humans to verify the drug. Effectiveness and safety. Medical writers can document the study protocol before it begins. When the trial is done, they write a clinical study report. Clinical study protocols and reports are much more complex and can require hundreds or thousands of pages. After all the clinical studies are completed, the pharmaceutical company has to write a comprehensive summary about the drug in accordance with the regulations, and collect and analyze the data to obtain more information. The most important skill and ability you need to be a successful medical writer is to use good technical skills to engage your readers, enables it to communicate well with lay readers. “Embracing innovation trends is important for staying competent, competency in overall medical communications opens doors to opportunity, and medical communication expertise can expand horizons for medical writers and other medical communicators (“Expanding Horizons as a Medical Writer Actions” Clemow, David.)”. They must have strong learning ability and teamwork ability, work proactively and have a sense of responsibility.
2. According to the article of Expanding Horizons as a Medical Writer by David Clemow, it shows “Medical writing trends include increasing digital content, data visualization replacing verbose prose, viable component-based authoring tools, interactive data analysis and visualization tools to aid clinical study data review, and medical writing certification”. I prefer two important writing trends are data visualization replacing verbose prose and medical writing certification. First, data visualization replacing verbose prose because it greatly helps the creative team figure out what needs to be written. It saves the team a lot of time and resources. Second, the establishment of medical writing certification can help medical writers improve their market competitiveness. For example, the Medical Writer Certified (MWC) credentialing program demonstrates that holders of this credential have an understanding of core parts of medical writing. Bring diversity to career paths while maintaining medical competitiveness. At the same time, it is also a proof of their love and professionalism.
MaKayla Grant
“Medical writing involves the development and production of print or digital documents that deal specifically with medicine or health care.” (Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Medical Writer, American Medical Writers Association, 1) After reading this, I now understand more about medical writing and its importance today. Medical writing is about more than just knowing medical terminology. Still, it is being able to understand and express new research, medical study, medical research, etc. the list could go on for a while. Medical writers have to be able to know what they have to write about but also have to be able to change the way they talk or word things to compensate for multiple different types of audiences with varying levels of understanding. Not only do they focus on medical documentation, but they also have many other aspects in which they work; they have to be able to help create medical devices with any and all information needed about diseases, patient information, education and training, and many other things. “Medical communication positions in writing and editing vary greatly across industries, companies, organizations, and other entities. In addition to the title of medical writer, medical communicators may be known as scientific writers, technical writers, regulatory writers, promotional writers, health care marketers, health care journalists, or communication specialists.” ( Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Medical Writer, American Medical Writers Association,3) This quote gives a good idea of what medical writers do; it cannot be summed up in just a sentence, but it does an excellent job of leading into what medical writers do. There are many different categories of medical writing and many other things you could be doing, and medical writing is not just one job. “Every medical writer and editor should be familiar with the professional focus areas in medical communication and should be aware of trends occurring in these areas. AMWA has defined six main professional focus areas, which are described here. You probably are familiar with some of these areas, but you may be unfamiliar with others.” (A Professionals Guide to Advancing Your Career, American Medical Writers Association, 3). The six main categories are Regulatory writing, Scientific publications, Health communication, Education for professionals, Promotional writing, and Grantsmanship. All of these categories have different things they are doing within the medical writing field, and medical writing is not limited to these either; there is still more within this field.
After reading “Expanding Horizons as a Medical Writer” (Clemow, David), I identified multiple Medical writing trends, but the first one I decided to focus on is “Finally, an increasing number of writers are getting certified, and certification is now being recognized by employers.” (Clemow, David, 10) This is important for new Medical Writers to understand because they are more likely to get a job and also more likely to get higher pay if they have some expertise in the medical writing field. Employers are starting to take and pay more for people with a degree or something that jumps out at them for a position in this field. The second medical trend I decided to focus on is “We only remember 20 % of what we read but up to 80% of what we visualize and interact with; thus, as visualization significantly improves engagement, understanding, and retention, the trend is for visualization to replace text and long prose.” (Clemow, David, 9) This is important for new Medical Writers to understand because it tells us that we do not take in most of the information we read; therefore, when creating these documents for people who are reading them to start using more pictures and visually engaging things besides words, so that way when people are reading these medical documents they are taking in and understanding the information that is needed opposed to reading an entire document and only comprehending 20% of it.
