• Question: What does a senior medical writter acctually do!?

    Asked by jellybaaby on 19 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 19 Mar 2013:


      Great question – full marks for honesty!

      I work with pharma companies to help them improve awareness of their drugs. If more doctors/nurses know about a drug and know the benefits it can offer, then they might decide it’s the best treatment for their patient – and it can help the patient recover.

      There are lots of different ways of increasing doctors’ understanding of a drug and I work on a whole load of these – slide decks, scientific publications (essentially essays explaining the results of clinical trials), presentations for conferences, brochures and leaflets and then the cool digital stuff like ibook, web conferences… If you can write it, I probably do it!

      I also do some work that ends up being used by patients. Have you ever noticed the little leaflet that comes insides the box with medicines? People like me have to write those leaflets. I also write websites and leaflets that help patients understand more about their illness and how different drugs might help them.

      Some people think that it’s not right for people like me to work with pharma companies – and that it’s wrong for drug companies to try and make money out of people being sick. The thing to remember about pharma companies though is that they are just that – a company. Drug development and clinical trials are very expensive to run (millions of pounds) and unless they are able to sell their drug at the end of it, they wouldn’t be able to do research or develop new medicines.

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