Are you are a writer new to the speciality of Medicine? Do you find yourself in unknown territories with some medical content?
Do not despair.
Trough experience you will soon feel comfortable when writing any kind health-related content.
as the content they create.
Types of medical content
Medical journalism:
This kind of content is generally for the general public. Such materials typically consist of newspaper and magazine articles. It comes in a simple language that does not require any specialist knowledge.
Medical Education:
This section is aimed at clinicians and healthcare workers. As a medical writer, you will be involved in drafting textbooks, editing study material or compiling powerpoint presentations. These formats play an essential part in the domain of Continued Medical Education programs.
Patient Education:
When writing for patients, composers of health-related content need to adopt a simple language. For this kind of educational material, the border with medico-marketing writing becomes hazy.
Medical marketing:
Pharmaceutical or medical marketing writing is a massive speciality for the medical author. It is not surprising that companies often outsource to medical writers to manage their medico-marketing material. Subsequently, the tasks of a medico-marketer involve developing product monographs, promotional and advertising material and training manuals. Recently, online learning content has become a popular assignment for the medical author.
Presentations and Publications:
Abstracts, posters and presentations as seen during conferences or seminars play a critical function in academic medicine. You might find that you are often involved in drafting or reviewing journal articles and manuscripts.
Research documents:
Medical writers are an essential part of the drug development industry. Their role in developing important research documents is indispensable. Formats of study-related content include informed consent forms, clinical trial protocols, investigators brochures, subject diaries and clinical study reports.
Regulatory documents:
Precise regulatory writing is crucial for any biotechnology or pharmaceutical company. Regulatory medical writers deal with documents required by regulatory bodies to conduct new clinical trials or marketing approval of new medicines. This content is found on package inserts of drugs, Common Technical Document, subject narratives, safety update reports, annual reports, and more.
Keep your Reader in Mind
As you can see, every document type has its own target audience, and the language must be adapted for each group. Only through optimal language can you create effective information transfer.
- Patient documents must be as simple – free from jargon.
- Reports for the scientific community, on the other hand, have to meet their professional expectations. In this case, specialist terminology is inevitable, even desirable.
- Similarly, documents meant for regulatory agencies must follow ethics and legal protocols.
The medical writer has indeed a diverse job, full of interesting subjects, covering all areas of medical discourse – from high brow academic to simple instructive.