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Articles & Websites of Interest

How To Become A Competent Medical Writer

Sharma S. (2010). How to become a competent medical writer?. Perspectives in clinical research, 1(1), 33–37.

"Medical writing involves writing scientific documents of different types which include regulatory and research-related documents, disease or drug-related educational and promotional literature, publication articles like journal manuscripts and abstracts, content for healthcare websites, health-related magazines or news articles. The scientific information in these documents needs to be presented to suit the level of understanding of the target audience, namely, patients or general public, physicians or the regulators. Medical writers require an understanding of the medical concepts and terminology, knowledge of relevant guidelines as regards the structure and contents of specific documents, and good writing skills. They also need to be familiar with searching medical literature, understanding and presenting research data, the document review process, and editing and publishing requirements. Many resources are now available for medical writers to get the required training in the science and art of medical writing, and upgrade their knowledge and skills on an ongoing basis. The demand for medical writing is growing steadily in pharmaceutical and healthcare communication market. Medical writers can work independently or be employed as full time professionals. Life sciences graduates can consider medical writing as a valuable career option."

Close Reading and Creative Writing in Clinical Education: Teaching Attention, Representation, and Affiliation

Charon, Rita, MD, PhD, Hermann, Nellie & Devlin, Michael. (2016). Close Reading and Creative Writing in Clinical Education: Teaching Attention, Representation, and Affiliation. Academic Medicine, 91, 345-350. https://doi.org/10.1097/ACM.0000000000000827.

"Medical educators increasingly have embraced literary and narrative means of pedagogy, such as the use of learning portfolios, reading works of literature, reflective writing, and creative writing, to teach interpersonal and reflective aspects of medicine. Outcomes studies of such pedagogies support the hypotheses that narrative training can deepen the clinician's attention to a patient and can help to establish the clinician's affiliation with patients, colleagues, teachers, and the self. In this article, the authors propose that creative writing in particular is useful in the making of the physician. Of the conceptual frameworks that explain why narrative training is helpful for clinicians, the authors focus on aesthetic theories to articulate the mechanisms through which creative and reflective writing may have dividends in medical training. These theories propose that accurate perception requires representation and that representation requires reception, providing a rationale for teaching clinicians and trainees how to represent what they perceive in their clinical work and how to read one another's writings. The authors then describe the narrative pedagogy used at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. Because faculty must read what their students write, they receive robust training in close reading. From this training emerged the Reading Guide for Reflective Writing, which has been useful to clinicians as they develop their skills as close readers. This institution-wide effort to teach close reading and creative writing aims to equip students and faculty with the prerequisites to provide attentive, empathic clinical care."

Pulse - voices from the heart of medicine

"Telling the personal story of health care…by and for everyone–patients, health professionals and students of narrative medicine."  This resource includes the personal stories of doctors, their poetry,  the art they produce, impactful encounters with patients that left a mark on their practice. Understanding what makes up a person, both within their career life and outside of it, is crucial in the writing process."