Medical Writing as an “AltAc” Career Choice
When I first entered my PhD program almost a decade ago, like most first-year graduate students, I thought I wanted to eventually end up as a tenure track professor at an R1 research university. However, by year three of my PhD, I quickly learned that the countless hours of grant writing, stress surrounding possible job uncertainly if I chose to pursue a postdoc, frustrations balancing varying teaching loads, and endless dynamics of university politics just weren’t for me. I also can look back on some of the unease I felt about staying in academy, and recognize this as a desire to pursue something more clinical rather than the avenues of cognitive research I was then pursuing. While I understand now more than ever the importance of “bench science”—since this is something I cite almost daily in my current field of work—I find much more joy in making sense of existing or newly obtained preclinical and clinical data, rather being the one to generate them.
While I now have a clear understanding of what I want in a career, it certainly wasn’t always this way. The best career advice I ever received as a graduate student was from Dr. Gabriele Oettingen, who eventually went on to become a member of my dissertation committee, and it was this: Think of what you like to do best as a graduate student, and see what careers involve those activities. For me personally, I loved writing about and making sense of complicated data, often through the use of statistics, graphs, and tables. Over my years of offering career advice to graduate students regarding questions about their post-grad career plans, I’ve also added the additional suggestion of thinking about what you don’t like to do, and see if you can avoid those activities. For me, I didn’t love planning new studies, and running subjects. And while I loved mentoring research assistants and more junior scientists, I didn’t really love teaching.
What is Medical Writing?
In general, a medical writer is someone who writes scientific documentation in regulatory or educational fields. This documentation may include confidential regulatory evaluations and reports for review by notified bodies or the FDA, pieces for publication (such as manuscripts or abstracts), disease- or drug-related educational or promotional material for doctors or patients, or even health-related content for magazines, news, or healthcare websites. Medical writers also often work cross-functionally with clinicians, engineers, and regulatory to produce the most accurate documentation possible, especially when working with a smaller team.
The topic of your work will also vary by position. I’ve worked in a wide range of products, from dental implants, to orthopedics, to trauma. A skilled medical writer should be able to write documentation about just about any product type (see our last blog post for more detail), but I’ve found throughout my career journey that it’s also important to find a subject area you find interesting and personally valuable.
Who should pursue Medical Writing as an “AltAc” Career Choice?
Obviously, you should steer clear of medical writing if you don’t love to write. Medical writing also involves a lot of literature review, and may require skills for developing a literature search protocol (see our last blog post for more detail), so I often recommend medical writing to scientists who also love to read.
While some medical writers still work in an office or hybrid schedule, most medical writers work remote. I was remote prior to the COVID-19 pandemic (though I was always open to and loved periodical onsite visits), and this model is even more prevalent post-pandemic. Whether or not you’re a remote writer, medical writing requires self-discipline in goal-setting, and the ability to work at least partially independently. I had already set up this working model for myself whenever I had manuscripts to write in graduate school, so this was a work-style model I knew I could succeed in. Many of the documents medical writers produce are very long and detailed, so strong attention to detail is also key. Like Polonius said in Hamlet, “This above all, to thyne own self be true.”
Importantly, medical writing requires a passion for clinical work. A skilled medical writer must have a desire to create documentation that is precise and accurate, and a passion for clinical work will result in a stronger drive to achieve this. If you’re passionate about ensuring that products are the best they can be to help patients, you’ll be a better medical writer.
Let’s Talk Comp
Let’s face it, one of the hardest parts of being an academic, especially at the graduate student level, is the low pay. A rant about how undervalued PhD students are at the university level, and how many tenured professors have turned a blind eye to the crippling struggles thrown upon the shoulders graduate students…is another rant for another blog post. However, a burning question that many graduate students have when leaving academia is what will I get paid?
When it comes to medical writing, it depends based on the type of documentation you produce. For example, regulatory medical writers tend to make more than those in medical education, especially those in freelance and consulting, but those individuals also don’t receive the same benefits as full-time in-house writers. It is important to consider these preferences when looking at salaries. Moreover, I’ve always used American Medical Writer’s Association salary survey to negotiate. However, keep in mind your education level, experience, and more recently, the current market. Medical writers working as consultants in the EU MDR transition are reporting higher salaries than AMWA’s 2019 findings. The responsibilities of the role (e.g., Junior Medical Writer vs. Senior Medical Writer vs. Principal Medical Writer vs. manager, director, etc.) and type of company (corporate, consulting company, small public company, private, start-up) can also influence paygrade and what is offered to you in terms of total compensation packages. However, in almost all cases, the salaries of medical writers far exceed those seen in academia.
Do you need a PhD to be a Medical Writer?
While answers vary as to whether or not you need an advanced degree to pursue a career in medical writing, this will ultimately depend on the requirements of individual teams. While few teams specifically require a medical writer to hold a PhD (or similar, such as a PharmD) to lead certain types of medical writing projects, many companies will hire writers with masters degrees or bachelors degrees, if expertise and experience align with the responsibilities of the role. I do believe that the rigorous training required to complete a PhD often make an individual a better medical writer: all those hours in the lab thinking carefully about how to interpret a complicated finding or statistic, keeping up-to-date on the most relevant literature in your field, building systematic literature reviews, and writing clear and concise articles are exactly the skills necessary to become a successful medical writer. That being said, with the right experience, those skills can be built after completing a bachelor’s degree, or honed after completing a master’s degree. Area of expertise may be valuable to a team; for example, they may express a preference for STEM PhDs, or journalism/English majors, or individuals with hands-on clinical experience, such as medical doctors and nurses.
Some individuals with a desire to become medical writers have expressed difficulty entering the field to gain the initiate training experience required for medical writing roles. While some new writers may get hired directly by teams willing to put in the work to train a new writer, some writers chose to start their career as a freelance writer before moving onto a full-time or consulting role.
The Best Thing About Medical Writing…
…is that it allows you the opportunity to be both a scientist and an artist. Some days I can’t believe I found a career I love this much. As the demand for documentation produced by medical writers grows, I can’t wait to hopefully see more of you involved in a field so very dear to my heart.
