How to Succeed as a Medical Writer at an Agency

You were just hired as a medical writer for an agency. After having replied to the last “Congratulations!” e-mail from your LinkedIn buddies, its time to get down to real business. If you are a newly-minted PhD or post-doctoral student who has entered the workforce for the first time, you are probably filled with some mixture of excitement and trepidation.

There might not be much work to do during the first week, but that does not mean that you whittle down your time on Facebook. When assignments do arrive at your desk, they will likely keep you very busy, so you should take as much time as you are able right now to prepare for it. If you were given a heads-up that your services will be required for a particular drug and/or disease, read up on it. My first stop is almost always Wikipedia (I say with some reluctance). There are obviously major caveats with an openly-editable online encyclopedia like Wikipedia, and you should never trust anything that you read without having confirmed the alleged fact from a reputable source, such as a peer-reviewed article. On the other hand, a Wiki page is typically well organized in an expanded outline form, and it is an excellent way to: 1) come up to speed on the field rapidly; and 2) help you organize your content mentally and assist in the preparation of an outline. Next, I try PubMed (National Center for Biotechnology Information) and order several recent review articles, find the key primary references in the bibliography, and order those as well.

If you were hired to be involved in publication planning, especially manuscript writing, your time would be well-spent becoming familiar with editorial symbols and some basics from the American Medical Association (AMA) Style Guide. This will save you time and make your editors very happy; you will certainly rely on their goodwill sometime in the future. It is also recommended that you visit your client’s website and pick up any useful documentation (eg, product inserts, marketing material, etc). The most critical piece of information that you should be searching for is: How is the product trying to position itself in the marketplace? This will inform the direction and tone of your written content for that client.

What are some of the content that you may be responsible for developing? Publications, backgrounders, slide decks, executive summaries, and marketing-related material, such as key message documents and gap analyses. As I elaborated in “How I Fell Into Medical Writing,” preparing any of these documents will draw upon the skills that you honed as a PhD. Some points to consider when preparing content:

1)    Keep an eye on the deadline.
    If you have a 24-hour deadline, time is precious. There is no time to write another graduate dissertation. You will have to track down and absorb a lot of information rapidly, so, use your time wisely, especially for projects with a rapid turnaround time.
2)    Internet research can be a huge waste of time.
A major deadline-buster in research is chasing down unnecessary leads. Give yourself a time limit in researching potentially interesting but merely supporting information.  You need to prepare the essential points first. 
3)    Know your audience.
Backgrounders are used primarily by the companies’ strategic consultants or medical strategists to attempt to drum up new business. As they may have a limited amount of time to devote to researching the topic before delivering their sales pitch, what you write may be the only research that they read before formulating a strategy for the client. Put another way, what you write may dramatically effect whether your company will get the new business or not. Along a different vein, peer-reviewed publications are targeted to physicians and scientists who are often experts in the field that you are writing about. Writing for manuscripts should be especially high quality. A “breezy” writing style, while it may be fun to read, will not get past the review stage. Also, use respected references liberally. This is so important, that I will say it again:
4)    Use respected references liberally and from the start.
You should be prepared to defend or correct any statement that you make, so citing specific references in your document is crucial. If you forget to include a reference and must go back to it later, this will be a huge time-waster. Also, as a general rule, do not use the abstract of an article to summarize its findings. Order the article and read it. Obviously, do not lift entire sentences verbatim from an article unless you have obtained copyright clearance.
5)    Most of all, tell a good story.
Every piece of content that you write should have a story arc. It should be scientifically compelling, while addressing issues that are important to the client.
   
Two final pieces of advice during slow periods:

1) prepare short reports to attract new business. For example, if you are involved in publication planning, find out where there are gaps in the literature and suggest topics for new publications in a formal report. If accepted by the client, your manager will be grateful for the extra business that you have brought to the company.

2) offer your services to others in the department, especially if it involves content. The more projects and varied disease states that you have been involved with, the better your resume will look and the more opportunities will present themselves to you in the future.

Good luck!