Sam Talks About...

When I was looking into becoming a medical writer, I was just at the end of my MSc and trying to decide whether to try and get a job in medical communications or to do a PhD and then move into Med Comms later. The short answer is no you don't necessarily need  a PhD to be a medical writer, but some employers think you do and it certainly seems to be the ideal.  After looking around on the internet I found a few forum posts asking about the same thing, "should I do a PhD to get into Med Comms?”. Most people said no not necessarily. But as far as I could tell, all of them did have PhD’s and were just telling people well maybe yes and maybe no. Since getting a job as an associate medical writer without a PhD, I've heard a lot more of this conversation occurring within the industry and especially at careers fairs. A lot of people  do  have PhD’s and quite often post-doctoral experience. But that is normally because they started out in academia and...

Last week was big for me, it was the culmination of the past few months of work that had led me to waiting in Manchester Airport, ready to head off to my first conference as a medical writer. It was the European Society of Paediatric Endocrinology (ESPE) Annual Conference of 2015. Our client had a satellite symposium within the conference, at peak lunch hour. Unsurprisingly, 800 free lunch boxes can amass quite a crowd and we managed to fill most of the seats before the symposium started! My job on site, as medical writer, was to check the content that the speakers had provided (after some back and forth over email before heading out) was accurate and clear and to assist in crafting new drafts of the presentations that would project clearly once the content was finalised and had received comments from the authors and the various branches of the client’s internal approval team. Once we got on site, Jill (my boss), Nadine (the project manager) and Tony (the PowerPoint Wizard) an...