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The Accidental Medical Writer |
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Departments
- Welcome!
- [Not] Just for Newbies
- On the Radar
- Dollars & Sense
- TAMW Calendar
- The Savvy Marketer
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No Victims, Only Volunteers!
We're parents, and we're proud to each have 2 wonderful daughters (as well as very patient, supporting, and understanding spouses). One message we have both tried to instill in our children is that we are each individually responsible for the things that happen to us, good and bad. There are no victims, we would tell them, only volunteers who choose to be victims of their circumstance! This is such an important lesson that we repeat it to ourselves all the time.
Consequences happen no matter what, so we can either choose the path those consequences will take or have the path chosen for us. So what does this mean for freelances? This means that when you're presented with a challenge, turn it into an opportunity by choosing for yourself what you wish the outcome to be. That doesn't mean you'll always make the right choice, but at least the choice will be yours.
In this issue of Pencil Points we want you to stop volunteering to be a victim! We offer tips to help keep you from becoming the poster child for entrepreneurial ADD in [Not] Just for Newbies. In Dollars and Sense we show you how you can fight back against content mills and actually come out a winner. And in The Savvy Marketer we provide insight into how you can position your unique strengths and plant your flag atop one of medical writing's many financially rewarding but ever-evolving market segments. In On The Radar we introduce you to a fun and free way to brush up on your knowledge of epidemiology. And in Where In the World Are Brian and Cyndy we have some exciting news about our upcoming activities at this year's AMWA Annual Conference.
Wishing you writing success,
Cyndy and Brian
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 [NOT] JUST FOR NEWBIES
Information and Inspiration for New and Experienced Writers | | |
Don't Fall Victim to Entreprenurial ADD
Entrepreneurial ADD--that lack of focus that keeps some freelances chasing the next shiny object--often prevents medical communicators from moving their careers in the right direction. We see it all the time. Writers start out focusing on one specific disease state (women's health) or one kind of deliverable (CME needs assessments). When that approach doesn't give them enough work, they move on to what they perceive as the next hot topic, or maybe a writer friend mentions something new and exciting he's working on, and the cycle goes on and on. The point is it's a rather scattershot approach, one we fondly refer to as "Ready, fire, aim." If you're finding it hard to focus your career, we'd like to offer a solution. It's the simple SWOT analysis, a tool to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. We want you to sit down with a piece of paper and complete a personal SWOT analysis. Here's how. STRENGTHS These are your professional and personal characteristics that give you a competitive advantage over other writers. Write down some of your strengths. Think about: - Skills, certification, education, and connections you have that others don't
- Types of writing you like to do
- Types of writing you are good at
- Values you have that others may not have (Are you a stickler for deadlines?)
- Influential people you know that others don't
- Past experience that could differentiate you from others
WEAKNESSES These are your professional and personal characteristics that give you a competitive disadvantage. Think about: - Types of writing you are not good at
- Traits and poor work habits that limit your effectiveness (Are you disorganized? Do you get frustrated easily? Do you handle stress poorly?)
- Tasks you absolutely hate
- Experience you lack
- Writing and research tools (such as software programs or databases) that you should be able to use well but can't
- Areas in which other writers outperform you
OPPORTUNITIES These are conditions within the marketplace that are or may be favorable to your business. Think about: - Growth trends in the medical-writing industry
- Unmet needs in the medical-writing industry
- Problems in the medical-writing industry for which you can offer solutions
- Colleagues who may have too much work and would consider referring work to you
- New technologies that could make your work easier or more efficient
- Whether any of your strengths could lead to opportunities
THREATS Threats are conditions within the marketplace that are or may be unfavorable to your business. Think about: - Obstacles in the medical-writing industry
- Other qualified people who are competing with you for projects
- Changing job demands
- Changing technologies
- Current economic climate
- Whether any of your weaknesses could lead to threats
Use your completed personal SWOT analysis as a framework so you can capitalize on your strengths and minimize or eliminate your weaknesses. You want to take advantage of the opportunities you've identified and avoid or lessen the threats. For example, did you write down that you absolutely hate to annotate documents? Then writing sales-training materials is not something you would want to do. Did you indicate that you were a nurse and have a background in direct patient care? This past experience could create an opportunity for you writing patient-education materials. Want to delve deeper into using a SWOT analysis to redirect your career? We'll be presenting a how-to seminar at the AMWA Annual Conference on this topic, so be sure to register for it. In the meantime, check out Analysis Without Paralysis: 12 Tools to Make Better Strategic Decisions (2nd Edition). Chapter 12 reviews the SWOT analysis. |
ON THE RADAR
Resources for Medical Writers | | |
We found the neatest iPad app recently. Developed by the Centers for Disease Control, Solve the Outbreak is a fun way to better understand patterns of disease transmission and learn how experts try to stop outbreaks. This is an interactive app, so you are in charge of making the decisions. Do you need more lab results? Is quarantine necessary? The goal is to get a high score--the higher your score, the more lives you can save. We're on our way to becoming Disease Detectives. Want to play along?
Solve the Outbreak is free in the iTunes Store. |
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DOLLARS & SENSE
Advice on the Business of Freelancing
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Make Your Point. Make a Difference.
About a month ago a request came through one of the list serves to which we subscribe that made our toes curl in anger. A company was seeking "experienced" medical writers to research the recent medical literature in various therapeutic areas and prepare synopses of the most pertinent information of which healthcare professionals specializing in those therapeutic areas should be aware. The post didn't say how these synopses would be delivered to their intended audiences, but we figured they were probably destined for electronic delivery. The company promised tons of ongoing work and boasted a fee per synopsis of $200. The allotted time for writers to crank out these little beauties was 2 to 3 business days.
So let's do the math. If you agreed to take on as many of these assignments as they could give you and you turned each one around in 2 business days, without taking a day off you would be able to write 130 synopses a year and make a whopping $26,000. If you devoted full 8-hour working days to each synopsis, that would equate to about $12.50 per hour. If you were better and faster and it took you just 4 hours to write each synopsis you'd only make $25 per hour. And if you were really fast and wrote each one in just 2 hours-which, quite honestly, we doubt anyone could do or do well--you'd still make only $50 per hour, which is nowhere near a respectable hourly rate for any professional medical writer regardless of experience level. If your goal is to earn the equivalent of $100 per hour, we dare say you'd eat up the entire budget before you could even finish researching and procuring references, reading them, and identifying the most pertinent topics!
We've written about these wicked content mills in previous issues of Pencil Points and warned as many people as we can reach about the importance of avoiding them at all costs because they do no one any good. No matter how hungry you are for work, allowing content mills to abuse you keeps them in business to pay paltry sums for good-quality work. It debases the legitimacy of all medical writers everywhere, and makes it that much more difficult for any of us to earn what we're truly worth.
Normally we ignore these fishing expeditions, and we sincerely hope you do, too. But this time we tried something different, and boy did we get a good education in the process.
We responded to the post asking for some additional information. The person who responded to our query confirmed our expectation that the project would be impossible for anyone who normally earns a legitimate fee for their services to make money. This gave us the opportunity to enter into a dialogue, during which we thoughtfully acknowledged the challenge the person was facing in finding experienced (or even inexperienced) medical writers. As the email conversation unfolded it became apparent that the person we were "talking" to was frustrated. We presented our advice that the company raise its fee to a realistic amount, and that in return it would attract excellent writers who would do an excellent job, and we received a surprising response. We were thanked for our insight and candor, and told that while the company would never pay more, it probably wouldn't be in business much longer. The person told us he would keep our name and contact information and call us when he got to his next company, which he assured us would have to value quality and professionalism.
Now, this person may or may not ever call. The point is that we presented honest and accurate advice and made a good impression on someone who may benefit us in the future. Having a stranger walk away thinking that you are a professional can never hurt.
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| WHERE IN THE WORLD ARE BRIAN AND CYNDY?
The Accidental Medical Writer Calendar
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If you're looking for additional opportunities to network with colleagues and enhance your career, there is still time to register for the 17th Annual AMWA-DVC Princeton Conference being held on Saturday, April 20. We won't be there to present, but we love this conference and want to make sure you know about it, too. There are a total of 4 excellent credit workshops being offered plus 2 very practical and hands-on How-to Sessions. Click here to register and click here to view the registration brochure.
The AMWA Annual Conference is the ultimate resource for medical communicators around the world, offering educational and networking opportunities beyond compare in the field. We learned this week that all of our proposals were accepted for this year's conference, and we are THRILLED! We'll share more information with you once everything is finalized.
If you'd like us to come and speak at an event you're organizing, don't wait too long to contact us. Our schedule is filling fast!
Be sure to check out Brian's interview in Breaking Into Medical Writing and Editing by Kristen Fischer that was published online on January 6 by mediabistro.com, a top site for communication professionals who create or work with content. If you're a member of AvantGuild you can access the article for free. If not, there's a $55 annual subscription fee, which gives you access to all the exclusive content the site offers. If you recall, Kristen interviewed Cyndy last year for the Freelance Switch blog, which you can read here. Thanks, Kristen.
For all our upcoming activities and appearances, keep an eye on The Accidental Medical Writer In Person.
We frequently speak and teach at medical writing conferences and seminars; we've also been interviewed online. Check out our Webcasts. Brian's interview with Danielle Hampson of The Business Authors Show is also available right on our website!
We would love to present at your next upcoming meeting or event, so invite us!
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| THE SAVVY MARKETER
Marketing Tips to Build Your Business | | |
Pass Your Ad Boards With Flying Colors
Advisory board meetings--ad boards for short--have been around for a while. And medical writers have been key players in creating the deliverables that result from these meetings. These deliverables can be quite different, depending on the goal of the meeting. They range from executive summaries that detail the outcome of the meeting, to case studies the advisors developed as a way to communicate diagnostic or treatment approaches, to marketing and positioning statements the advisors agreed upon.
If covering ad boards is something you want to do, then you should be aware of some trends we've noticed over the past couple of years in how pharmaceutical companies conduct their ad board meetings. It used to be common practice for the companies to pay to have the writer on site to listen to the discussions as they took place during the meeting and to create context to better understand the advisors' positions. Often, the writer was permitted to tape the meeting, or the company provided an audiotape of the proceedings in addition to having an on-site medical writer. This was an ideal set-up; observing the meeting in person and later listening to the meeting on tape gave us nearly all we needed to write clear, concise summaries. If we couldn't decipher our hastily written notes, we could listen to the audiotape. (If you have permission to record, we recommend the Livescribe Smartpen that records and remembers everything you hear and write so you never miss a word. After the meeting, click on the note you wrote or the diagram you drew, and the pen will replay the audio it recorded at the time the note was taken. By docking the smart pen to your computer you can download the visual and audio to save it, search it, and organize it, and even share it with others via email or social media. It's really a great tool.)
With the economy tanking, companies became less willing to pay the travel and hotel expenses to have a writer on site. Instead, they audiotaped the meeting and had transcripts prepared, which the medical writer used to create the deliverables. Unfortunately, if the transcripts were prepared by non-native-English speakers, or by people who are unfamiliar with the language of medicine or the parlance of the particular therapeutic area, they often had spelling and grammatical errors that made it tough to figure out exactly what happened during the meeting. Sometimes writers received the actual tapes along with the transcripts, but not always. And without an on-site frame of reference, much guesswork was involved.
Lately we've seen yet another trend. Because of concerns about regulatory oversight and litigation, some companies are opting to do away with audio recordings altogether and have gone back to bringing writers to the meetings, with one caveat: writers are not permitted to tape the proceedings and must rely strictly on their handwritten notes. Talk about a challenge! You really need to be familiar with the therapeutic area yourself, or you're likely to fall behind quickly.
The bottom line is that when you throw your hat in the ring for these kinds of jobs, understand what the client expects of you, and then highlight the specific skills you'll need, such as:
- Working one-on-one with physicians
- Listening and summarizing verbal discussions
- Taping live meetings
- Developing materials from taped proceedings
- Creating materials from hand-written notes
- Taking detailed notes under pressure
And if you know shorthand (does anyone these days?), flaunt that skill as well! It's another differentiator that makes you stand out. |
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