Types of medical writing pdf

Physicians across all therapeutic areas require regular CME credits to keep their credentials updated. To address these knowledge gaps, a CME medical writer might help a CME provider create a slide deck on a specific disease, write literature review articles, or create needs assessments ie, grant proposals that seek funding from pharmaceutical companies. Medical writers who are interested in CME writing may wish to join the Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Professions to learn more about CME and to connect with other professionals in the field.

Pharmaceutical, medical device, CME, and biotechnology companies publish articles in medical journals on a regular basis. These articles may include a literature review or a paper that reports recent findings from a phase 1 study. A medical writer will help write the manuscript for these companies and may assist in the submission process to a medical journal. A medical writer will often use an author-approved outline provided by the company or their client.

Regular meetings will sometimes be necessary during the preparation of the manuscript to ensure milestones are hit prior to the deadline. Compared to other types of medical writing, regulatory writing is the most formal and relies less on creativity and more on concise facts.

It can be a challenge for writers who are used to news pieces or long-form journal articles, patient education, or pieces that require theoretical explanations of medical concepts. The Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society offers helpful courses for medical writers who want to learn about regulatory writing or wish to sharpen their current regulatory writing skills.

Medical writing can often take a formal and technical tone, especially for educational materials geared toward clinicians and business leaders. But some medical writers prefer writing for a patient or consumer audience. This type of writing is less formal and simpler in its use of terminology. Many medical writers who write for CME companies or pharmaceutical organizations are used to communicating with physicians. These healthcare providers often understand complex medical terms and want written content that speaks to their level of education.

Patients and consumers want straight-to-the-point materials that are easy to digest and use simple terminology. That can be a challenge for some medical writers who write scientific content for clinicians. As some point in their career, medical writers are faced with the option to specialize in a specific therapeutic area or choose to be a jack of all trades.

The latter is certainly a reasonable option — medical writers are detail-oriented professionals who can understand medical and scientific concepts, no matter the therapeutic area. Audiences for medical writers are as varied as the documents that they write.

Following are some different types of medical writing. Writers new to medical writing may be involved in one or two of these types while experienced medical writers are usually well versed with all these different types of writing:. Such documents generally consist of newspaper and magazine articles and are written in as simple language as possible. For patients, medical writers are routinely involved in developing education material. This generally falls under medico-marketing writing in pharmaceutical companies.

Many medical communication companies also hire medical writers to handle medico-marketing work outsourced to them. Medico-marketing writing involves developing promotional and advertising material, training manuals, product monographs, web content for general public, online learning study material etc.

Medical writers also write and review and edit journal articles and manuscripts. They play a critical role in developing important research documents such as clinical trial protocols, informed consent forms, investigators brochures, clinical study reports, subject diaries etc.

They are generally the same writers involved in medico-marketing writing as well.