![]() Here are 5 tips to help you find success as a medical writer… 1. Decide between freelance and a staff position. With medical writing, you’re faced with synthesizing large volumes of data and making decisions all day long about how you’re going to present information.īut, there’s more to succeeding in medical writing than being smart. PhDs are smart, and you can’t substitute intelligence. 5 Tips To Be Successful In Medical Writing If you are a STEM PhD and you like writing, a career in medical writing could be a great way for you to transition out of academia and into industry. So, it’s an ideal profession for people with kids or someone who wants job flexibility.Īccording to Payscale, medical writers earn an average of $72,000, but earning upwards of $100,000 is not uncommon. More and more people are shifting to a remote working situation, 43% of people report working remotely at least some of the time, and medical writing supports this shift perfectly, as reported by The New York Times. Plus, medical writing allows you the opportunity to work from home on your own schedule, or to travel while you work. You’re able to stay connected to science and research by getting to talk to scientists about their work. Medical writing is different from a PhD study, where you are just looking at the function of a single protein or something very narrow In medical writing, you acquire a very broad knowledge base. Medical writers are constantly learning about a wide range of topics, and you will end up knowing a lot about health, which is useful to the people in your life. The ability to research well is one of the most important skills a medical writer can have.Īs a medical writer, you will often have to write about topics that you know very little about, and the researching skills you learned as a PhD are essential. Not only does your STEM PhD provide you with a strong knowledge base for medical writing, it makes you an expert researcher. The third category is writing for a consumer audience, which includes writing for feature magazines, newspapers, and online portals.Ī background in a STEM field, especially a science field, is well-suited to each of these categories of medical writing. The second is regulatory writing, which includes all documentation for the FDA, such as new drug applications and prescribing information. The first is writing for clinicians and doctors, including writing continuing medical education documents and journal manuscripts. It can be split up into three general categories. Medical writing is basically any type of written communication involving medicine. Why Medical Writing Is A Great Career Option For STEM PhDs Plus, my first year out of graduate school, I made $90,000 as a medical writer and I haven’t looked back. My husband is a divorce lawyer, and he deals with emotional stuff, and I don’t have to deal with any of that. You’re dealing with scientists who are very professional about their work. The thing I like most about medical writing, is that it’s non-emotional and there’s a lot of integrity in the industry. If medical writing is something that you’re drawn to, then just believe in yourself and believe in the process, because life is too short to be in academia, if you don’t want to be. So, if you are in that situation, where people are telling you, “What are you doing, throwing away a perfectly good career in science?” - ignore them. I faced quite significant opposition by my dissertation committee, about my decision to go into medical writing. I started editing people’s dissertations, taking on any freelance work I could, and then I also got a master’s in technical writing. I made the decision right then, that I was going to become a science writer, and then it morphed into medical writing, which is a subgroup of science writing. I started searching online, and I found the National Association of Science Writers. That compliment came back to me, and I thought, “Well, maybe I can combine science and writing.” I had been told back in college that I had talent as a writer, and I didn’t think much of it at the time. So, I started thinking about the other skills I had that would combine well with science. ![]() ![]() I did not want to work 80 hours a week and earn a low salary. Right in the middle of my PhD, I knew that I had been working too hard, for too long, to do a postdoc. Based on the Industry Careers for PhDs Podcast with Emma Hitt Nichols, Ph.D.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |