Writing professionally for almost 20 years, I appreciate the nuance of different aspects of medical writing. I define a medical writer as developing content about the practice of clinical medicine, clinical research, or the health policy and economics influencing decisions at the point of care. I distinguish the role of a scientific writer as being more directed toward a lay audience. Personally unable to claim success at nailing 8th-grade level a la Flesch-Kincaid writing, I stopped trying after a client asked me to ...
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Writing professionally for almost 20 years, I appreciate the nuance of different aspects of medical writing. I define a medical writer as developing content about the practice of clinical medicine, clinical research, or the health policy and economics influencing decisions at the point of care. I distinguish the role of a scientific writer as being more directed toward a lay audience. Personally unable to claim success at nailing 8th-grade level a la Flesch-Kincaid writing, I stopped trying after a client asked me to describe a ureter based on its resemblance to spaghetti. And then I was subsequently fired for the apparent important lack of the marketable skill. Or when challenged to write National Institute of Health (NIH) Congressional Justifications for government funding informed the writing had to be 8th grade level or it couldn't go to congress for review. Yes. Really. My original perspective for this book was along the lines of Anthony Bourdain in Kitchen Confidential--a raw, informative, but not always pretty account of the medical writer's daily life. Thinking of the repercussions of telling such a substantive story I recall an Anne Lamott quote, "You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better."
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