Do you have the skills and qualities necessary to be a successful medical writer? If you want to become a medical writer, it is important that you first understand the essential skills to thrive in the marketplace. When you understand the necessary skills for medical writing and know what sets you apart from other writers, it will be easy for you to market those skills to potential employers.
It is true that not all medical writers are the same. But unsurprisingly, there are common skill sets and qualities which successful medical writers have. If you’re looking to become one of them, then you will have to have these skills/qualities as well.
You need to be good at research
Research is the backbone of medical writing and will help you come up with quality content that your clients will love. It is one of the core skills for medical writing. Moreover, it is also important because it can help to streamline your work and ultimately save you time in the long term.
You need to know your stuff and what you write needs to be sound. When medical writers don’t meet these criteria, it leaves their clients open to being embarrassed through words they have commissioned to a medical writer but that should never have been written that way.
Great medical writers research well. It may seem obvious, but maybe not. Medical writers should know how to look for information and leverage it for the benefit of their clients. Through research, you can find empirical evidence, who you should target with your content, or even discover where your weaknesses may lie.
This is why at Medcomms Academy, we lay a well-deserved emphasis on research, and our students learn how to search for and find the right medical literature.
You can learn more about finding information quickly in a world of information overload here.
You must be creative
Creativity is at the top of the list of skills for medical writing. There are a lot of attributes a good medical writer should have, but creativity is one of the important ones. As you know, it’s not a standard type of work where you just need some writing skills and consider yourself a specialist. Medical writing is not about sitting in front of the computer for hours without thinking about the task. In addition to that, medical writing requires specific knowledge and experience (much more than common writing). It demands a creative approach where you should come up with new ideas, which will ultimately lead to success
Being a medical writer involves a lot of creativity. Medical writing is an art form. Therefore, to survive and thrive, creativity is essential.
A good medical writer should be able to show his/her creativity in every work. This is essential not only for writing good content but for problem-solving as well.
You need to be analytical
Being analytical is one of the most important skills for medical writing. As a medical writer, you will be involved in the research and writing of papers and reports. This means that you will need to learn to be analytical. It is a vital skill any medical writer worth his or her salt must possess.
Analytical thinking is a type of thinking that focuses on problem-solving —finding solutions by analysing the situation, identifying the underlying motive and getting to the root cause. It requires evaluating your overall goal(s) and figuring out what needs to be done to get it. It’s similar to critical thinking.
Medical writers are thought to be more logical and analytical. This goes back to the skills and experience needed for creating content in general. Creatives may be good at coming up with ideas but they may not have very advanced knowledge of the topic. Conversely, analytical writers understand what is needed but they do not have the talent to come up with great information that the audience is hungry for. Writing is all about having the right combination of both sets of talents and skills.
You should enjoy writing
Medical writing is a great field that you should enjoy writing. If you enjoy writing, then you’ve found the right place. It really is true: if you like it, you’ll most likely become an excellent medical writer.
Medical writing is different from all other types of writing. Even though the process of the profession seems similar, the way you write should be different. The professionals involved in medical writing need to follow many rules and regulations for content writing. This could a little frustrating if you don’t enjoy your work.
Thus, you should be passionate about writing in order to succeed as a medical writer. The truth is, if you go into the profession expecting high pay without much work, you’re heading for a disappointment. You can’t become a successful medical writer unless you do your homework, prepare well and take the time to understand everything as much as possible.
Occasionally, your client or boss may not be happy with your content. Those are times that could be a little depressing. However, during testing times like that, your passion for writing will help you to pull through.
You should be good at communicating with others
In the medical writing business, communication plays a critical role. It is everything! After all, a medical writer’s primary job is to communicate.
You need to be good at communicating with people around you including your clients, colleagues, and other professionals. Clients are very important in the medical writing business. They provide you with job opportunities. As a freelance medical writer, it is not unlikely to work on the same project with the same client for years or even decades. Thus, you need to maintain good working relationships with them for long term success.
No matter how good you are at writing and editing, if you can’t relate to people around you or make them understand your work and its importance, you’re going to face trouble sooner or later.
You need to be detail-oriented and accurate
Being a medical writer might look easy from the outside, but once you take a closer look at it, you find out that it is not as easy as it looks. Sure gathering information on illnesses and conditions and working with it might be easy, but you need to be detail-oriented and accurate so that you can write good content. You also need to remember the deadlines and come up with topics that are interesting to readers.
If you have any detail-oriented tendencies, then becoming a medical writer would definitely be a good career move. Aside from possessing the skills needed to be an excellent writer, being detail-oriented can be quite instrumental in making you an effective medical writer. You need to understand specifics and details if you want your writing to benefit your clients.
Being a medical writer requires great attention to detail and accuracy. Medical writers are responsible for creating accurate and comprehensive reference guides, technical articles, clinical and scientific content, as well as training material for hospitals, doctors, nurses and various other healthcare professionals.
Imagine the consequences of writing 10mg of a drug instead of 1mg in a clinical guide for healthcare professionals. That’s why detail orientation and accuracy are important and are part of the core skills for medical writing.
You need to have great technical writing skills
To kickstart your career, you will definitely need to have great technical writing skills. Whether you’re working for a small company or a big corporation, good technical writing skills will help you make it to the top faster.
The ability to use proper grammar, spelling and punctuation is vital. If your written work does not meet the required quality standards then you definitely won’t be able to get to the top of your career ladder. Showing off great writing skills is really important nowadays if you want to succeed as a medical writer. People have gotten so used to reading online texts as they are much more convenient and quick than printed materials. That’s why medical writers must take good care when writing their content – even more so than before. It’s important that your audience finish reading what you’ve written and understand it! Software like Grammarly is something every writer should make use of for this reason.
Medical writing is technical writing in itself, and it’s not easy to master from the start. While having a life science degree can help you understand the medical literature quicker and communicate with experts better, you need to further develop your technical writing ability to suit a variety of audiences.
Conclusion
A successful medical writer has a strong background in scientific research, medical terminology, and medical knowledge. These are the core skills for medical writing. They also need strong writing skills to effectively communicate with their audience, clients and colleagues.
However, the most important quality a freelance medical writer can have is tenacity – the ability to fight through difficult challenges and never give up along the way toward reaching their goals. Overall, if you want to be a successful medical writer, you’ll need an interest in interacting with different people from various specialisations, plus enjoy keeping up-to-date about any medical developments that could benefit your clients and audience.
You may also be interested in learning about 10 Ways to Get Freelance Medical Writing Jobs
