I’m Virginia Chachati and I’ve been a medical copywriter and video content creator since 2020 and before that I was a pharmacist for about six or seven years in London. I work completely remotely for mainly UK clients.
So what is the difference between medical writing and medical copywriting?
I have gone into medical copywriting because it’s more creative. I get an opportunity to do storytelling, and create things like writing scripts for videos, also social media posts.
Medical copywriting is really persuasive writing so I’m trying to convince the reader to do something. So this could be to book an appointment, make a donation, buy something, or maybe sign up to an email newsletter for example. Or maybe sign up to attend a webinar.
The great thing about medical copywriting is that you are directing the reader somewhere and usually at the end you’ll have something like a call to action also known as a CTA. And when you have a call to action it means that your writing has a very clear purpose.
So even though as a medical copywriter you’re writing things in a balanced way you are still trying to get the reader to do something.
Now when it comes to medical writing without the copywriting part it means that you are going to be writing probably more technical documents: like regulatory medical writing where you are writing documents that could either be used in clinical trials, maybe a patient consent form, or a document that will allow that medicine to be approved and go to market.
So these are really critical documents because it could take 10 years of research to find something that you want to go to market, maybe a new drug. Then you need about 2 to 5 years after that to actually prepare all of the materials before you launch it into the market, so that people can actually learn about it and buy it and use it. So medical writing in the traditional sense is going to be probably more regulatory more technical and very impartial, unbiased. And there’s usually not going to be a call to action in the same way that there is in medical copywriting.
Why did I choose medical copywriting vs medical writing?
So why did I choose to get into medical copywriting? The main reason is because there are more job opportunities as a medical copyriter, it’s easier to get into, and also I really like simplifying complex topics into something that is a bit more simple. I like having a goal; so if I’m doing a piece of writing I want to know that the reader is actually going to do something with that information.
Some people like to do writing that is purely educational and informational and that wouldn’t fall under copywriting but that is part of copywriting: so if you’re going to try to persuade someone to do something you do need to educate them and so that’s the medical writing part of medical copywriting if you like.
And with medical writing you’re probably going to be a bit more traditional and you’re going to want to include lots of references and with those the appropriate citations as well. You would still include that in medical copywriting but you probably would want to link to things that people can easily understand.
I would also say that medical copywriting probably is more flexible in terms of your career so if you are writing let’s say slide decks as a medical writer and they’re going to be used at a conference then that’s going to be quite technical and probably a copywriter will take that piece of medical writing and actually repurpose it to create something else maybe like a social media post and the call to action could be to buy a recording of either the webinar or the presentation so that you can learn more about what was actually said.
How to learn about medical copywriting
So I recommend that if you are interested in medical copywriting you do start to learn about it from the kind of advertising and marketing perspective. I do have some books that I like to recommend and the first one is The copywriters handbook by Robert Bly, so this one is really useful it’s quite a thick book but I would say that it’s very easy to read and it’s also got a lot of really useful tips. I also really like this book: Copywriting made simple by Tom Albrighton and again really easy to read and gives you lots of structures for your writing.
So when I talk about the structure of writing I usually mean that you understand how to present your opening paragraph, you know how to use headings, you know when to use bullet points, you know when is an appropriate time to have a call to action as well.
If you’d like to try doing some medical copywriting, then you are welcome to check out the medical copywriting course where I teach you copywriting skills and give you feeback on your writing. The medical copywriting course is also available in Spanish, which was created by Carmen and Rebeca at Medhionine who took the original course and then translated it. They will be your teachers for the medical copywriting course in Spanish.