Ultimate guide to medical writing

Welcome to the Ultimate guide to medical writing, by Virginia Chachati

What is medical writing?

Medical writing involves researching and writing about health and medical topics. It’s important because everyone needs information to make decisions about their health, to further their understanding of medical topics, or learn about new developments in healthcare. But someone needs to do the research, find credible sources of information, and write it up in a structured way that’s suitable for the audience (usually patients, healthcare professionals, or regulatory bodies).

Medical writing still needs to be evidence-based, and you need to describe the quality of the evidence too, for example, was it a randomised controlled double-blind trial? Or just a case study of a handful of people? Make this clear to your reader when you write.

Medical writers take information, understand it, and reframe it so it can easily be used and understood. They understand the rules when it comes to writing health and medical information for drug approvals, healthcare professionals, marketing and patients.

Medical writing is regulated, just like healthcare professionals. Regulations depend on what you are writing about, for example, regulations for writing about prescription only medicines (POMs) are more strict than general health education. And, regulations can differ based on the country your medical writing will be used, for example, writing for a UK company will be different to a US company.

As a healthcare professional, you already have the knowledge and skills to become a medical writer, either as a part-time or full-time career. Medical writers can work from home, travel while they work, or work in a “hybrid” model where you work a few days from home and a few days in the office each week.

A bit about the author

My name is Virginia Chachati, and I was a community pharmacist in London since 2014. After moving to Germany in 2020, I’ve worked remotely as a medical writer and content creator ever since. I’ve kept my registration as a pharmacist with the GPhC, as it keeps me accountable and credible (and I will move back to the UK one day!)

In my career, I’ve written and produced videos for the NHS, YouTube Health and World Health Organization (WHO). I currently evidence check health information pages for www.NHS.uk. Since 2021, I’ve helped bring together a community of thousands of medical writers, and we’ve learnt so much from each other. It’s brilliant to network and feel supported while learning about a new career like medical writing, and I am so grateful for it.

I hope you find this blog helpful to find out if medical writing is right for you, and how to get into it.

What are the different types of medical writing?

Regulatory medical writing

Regulatory writing involves writing documents that are part of clinical trials and the drug or medical device approval process. For example, patient consent forms, patient information leaflets, writing up results from trials, and applications for marketing authorisation (so you are allowed to “sell” the product).

You’re more likely to come across regulatory writing in pharmaceutical companies. You might need to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), or a non-compete which could stop you from working with a competitor for a few years (so keep this in mind before you accept work).

It’s harder to get into regulatory medical writing as a beginner because most people stay in their jobs for a long time, as they are often well-paid, so not many spots open up. You are more likely to need a Masters or PhD for this type of work, and there is not much room for creativity as there are standard documents and procedures you need to follow.

It can take months or years to complete projects in regulatory medical writing, mostly because of a back-and-forth between the writing team and the legal team that needs to approve everything, and the regulatory body (such as the MHRA in the UK, or CDC in the US) who has the final say on what is acceptable.

Even though you have good job security, you are unlikely to be allowed to put any of your work in a portfolio to help you find work in future, so you will be dependent on the recommendations of people you work with (so make sure you build good relationships with your team).

Promotional medical writing or medical copywriting

Promotional medical writing involves marketing and often writing in a persuasive way (known as medical copywriting), and this is the main type of medical writing I do (apart from patient education). This could be writing slide decks for conferences/sales teams, website pages, content for social media posts (including explainer video scripts and LinkedIn posts for companies), emails, newsletters and advertorials in magazines/journals.

Often, this type of medical writing falls under the umbrella of “medical communications” or “medcomms”.

You might write for a pharmaceutical company, a brand that sells their own products (such as a medical device, a supplement, or a health app), a company that offers services (such as a health clinic), governmental organisations, or a charity.

You get the opportunity to be creative, and learn a variety of skills, such as search engine optimisation (SEO). SEO is essential to help people find you on the internet!

Usually, finding work is quite easy as you can approach an agency, brand, or charity at any time and offer your services as a medical writer. However, sometimes projects can be cut short as the marketing department if often the first to go (as I’ve experienced a few times). Marketing is a year-round effort, but there are high and low seasons (so you might not have as much work during summer, but plenty of work during winter and spring).

You can learn a lot about medical copywriting and marketing from reading copywriting books, but you must follow rules about how you can market certain things and specific audiences (patients and healthcare professionals). Definitely read up on the ABPI, PAGB, and The Blue Guide in the UK.

It can be quicker to approve your writing and get it published if it’s for marketing, and you’re likely to be allowed to include it in your medical writing portfolio to help you get more work in future. You can build a decent portfolio in a few months.

Medical journalism

Medical journalism involves interviewing people to find out about events and reporting on it for companies or a specific audience (such as newsletter subscribers). Medical writers are often invited to conferences to write summaries about presentations because the speaker cannot be filmed (people pay for tickets to attend conferences and ask speakers questions, or attend training sessions).

If you’re good at finding subject matter experts (SMEs) or “thought leaders” who talk a lot about specific topics (and read all the latest research), and interviewing them, then you will enjoy medical journalism.

I wrote articles for Pharmacy Magazine early in my career (after spending 6 months trying to get in touch with the Editor) where I interviewed pharmacists and charity clinical leads.

Often, journalism is about “discovering the truth” and creating a story out of your research (supported by quotes from your interviews with experts/thought leaders) to convince the reader that what you are writing about actually matters and is current.

There’s a lot of room for creativity in journalism, however, you will need to write and deliver work quickly so that it’s published at the right time and it’s relevant to your specific audience.

Medical journalism will involve lots of video calls, phone calls, emails, and travel. And lots of research! Equally, you may face a lot of rejection when people ignore your requests for an interview, so you need to be persistent to get enough information so you can complete your article.

Editors will be the main people you work with, and you need to accept feedback, plus a lot of your work being cut down/rewritten to fit a space in a publication.

It can be difficult to get into medical journalism, but there are plenty of newsletters, websites, private communities, magazines, and publications that will invite you to drop off your portfolio or CV via email so they can reach out when they need someone.

You can often put your work in a portfolio to help you get future work, and the pay is decent (though they will offer a “standard rate” that may not have changed for years, so try to push for more).

However, like marketing, it has its busy and slow patches throughout the year depending on when conferences/events happen and new research is published.

Academic writing

Academic writing is the most technical type of medical writing. You have to be able to describe everything in a lot of detail, and cite relevant credible references.

You will likely write up research, make sense of graphs/tablets and statistics, and publish your work in peer-reviewed journals.

If you enjoyed writing a Masters or PhD thesis, academic writing is a good match. However, it may not pay well and there may not be much work to go around because it heavily depends on who is sponsoring the work (which could be a rich pharmaceutical company, or a start-up on a budget).

It can take a long time to get your work approved (especially if you are at the mercy of a supervisor), and sometimes it might not be approved for publication in specific journals (so always check the requirements before you write).

You can put your work in a portfolio, and make it available on Google Scholar/PubMed so you can keep a tally of how many people cite your work.

Educational medical writing

Educational medical writing involves writing textbooks, scripts for videos, leaflets and website content (such as blogs) for a variety of audiences, including young children at school, undergraduates at university, patients and the public, or healthcare professionals.

You need to like writing structured and organised information in a balanced, ethical and unbiased way. You can be creative if you want to write a story or use an analogy to explain something so it’s easier to understand.

Educational medical writing can pay well if you can take a complex topic and simplify it. Often, you may need to revisit previous work to update it (as new research is published and best practices change).

It can be challenging to find a role as an educational medical writer, as most of what you write will be evergreen, so there is a low chance of recurring work. You may want to recommend to your client to repurpose your work into different formats, which can help you bump up the price you charge to do the work in the first place. For example, taking a textbook chapter and turning it into a video, audio podcast, social media post, or article in a magazine.

You are more likely to be involved in “awareness campaigns” for pharmaceutical companies, and creating resources for charities, schools, hospitals or clinics. These are great pieces for a portfolio to help you get work in future too.

Continuing professional development (CPD)

A separate category of educational medical writing is creating resources for continuing professional development (CPD). This involves writing courses or CPD feature articles in journals/magazines for healthcare professionals to go towards their annual learning and development training to keep up their registration status.

This is quite a niche type of medical writing, and if you can get into it, you can stay in it for a long time. As CPD is an annual requirement, anything you write or create will often be used for a short time, and need to be updated based on changes for CPD learning standards.

CPD pieces are valuable for a medical writing portfolio, because it shows your ability to organise information and teach. It could also lead to public speaking opportunities or delivering workshops in person such as at a conference or at companies for their staff (and sometimes video webinars).

The equivalent of CPD in the US is continuing medical education (CME), so you may be able to repurpose your work (but change the references so they are relevant to a US audience). You’ll need to meet CME standards which may be different to CPD standards.

Generally, CPD work does pay well, especially if you get your work “CPD certified” by one of the CPD organisations that looks over your writing and assigns hours or points that count towards a healthcare professional’s annual requirements.

A week in the life of a medical writer

A typical week for a medical writer at medical communications agency starts with a team meeting, where everyone shares what they are working on. You report on the progress of your project, and you will often be reminded of any deadlines you need to meet.

You may get a new project to start, and this involves receiving a brief which you check. The brief will tell you what you need to do, for example the title of a blog and the keywords/headings you need to include. You should have a call with any new clients to meet them and ask questions about the brief.

You may need to pitch for new work, as this is how agencies operate. It often means you put together a slide deck to show you have the skills to complete the work a client has requested, and within the budget they have set.

You may receive feedback on work you have sent to a client, and you will need to review it and send it back to the client (this means making edits). Always keep track of which version you have sent the client. And you may need to work with a designer or person who uploads information to a website to proofread that the writing has been copied and pasted correctly.

You probably spend about 10% of your time in meetings, another 10% answering emails, 25% making edits, 5% filling out a timesheet and 50% researching, reading and writing.

If you are working for a pharmaceutical company, you will often have a team meeting and talk about internal projects, or projects you have assigned to a medical communications agency. Then spend time researching, reading, writing and editing.

If you are a freelancer (like me right now), you will spend time marketing yourself (such as posting on social media/your website, or sending emails), looking for projects to work on, having conversations with your clients or fellow medical writers about work, researching/reading/writing/editing, and sending proposals for work and invoices to get paid. You might also travel to meet clients in person (this is definitely worth doing to help build better long term relationships).

Wherever you work as a medical writer, try to spend some time learning and improving your skills as a writer each week. This could be structured learning provided by your employer, listening to a podcast, doing writing exercises, or speaking to a fellow medical writer to learn how they do things. You could invest in a few books or courses, or even one-to-one mentoring. You’ll find it easier to find work and pivot from one type of medical writing to another in future if you need to.

Is medical writing right for you?

Medical writing will suit you if you:

  • Enjoy spending lots of time researching, reading, writing and editing
  • Critically look at what you are reading or writing to ensure it is credible and well-written
  • Take on feedback from others, yet question it where necessary
  • Get satisfaction from finishing off projects that may take a few months or years to complete (often you are writing a series of things for a project)
  • Do not mind working alone most of the time
  • Can collaborate with a team that may have a variety of skills (such as designers)
  • Work well to keep to reasonable deadlines
  • Can communicate clearly why you have written something in a certain way
  • Learn new skills and information quickly/under pressure when needed

Medical writing interview questions

These are the top 5 questions you might get during a medical writing job interview.

What is your process to produce a piece of medical writing?

  • Review the brief from the client to ensure you understand the audience, the type of medical writing required (for example, a blog), tone of voice, and any key calls to action to include if relevant.
  • Attend any meetings with the client to ask questions about the brief and make suggestions on how the piece of medical writing should be written/designed.
  • Structure the piece of medical writing with a title and headings.
  • Research highly credible sources of information and place notes under each of the headings.
  • Check the sources of information are acceptable with the client.
  • Write the first draft.
  • Get feedback from the client/review team/legal team.
  • Make edits.
  • Get final sign off from the client.
  • Review the writing after it has been designed so it is ready to be published online or printed.

Why do you want to work with us as a medical writer?

  • I want to learn from more experienced medical writers to develop my research, writing and editing skills.
  • I am interested in writing about this topic, for example:
    • I want to provide accessible, evidence-based health information for patients to help them make decisions about their health.
    • I find it satisfying to be involved in the drug approval process to help patients get access to life changing medicines.
    • As a healthcare professional myself, I understand the importance of producing educational material for healthcare professionals to develop their knowledge and understanding in key therapeutic areas such as diabetes.
  • I am interested in learning and training opportunities, such as attending conferences, that will help me progress in my career as a medical writer.

You are a healthcare professional, why do you want to be a medical writer?

  • As a healthcare professional, I have a degree which supports the clinical knowledge needed to research, read and understand health and medical information. I really enjoy learning about all aspects of healthcare, and then writing about it for a variety of audiences, such as patients and fellow healthcare professionals.
  • As a healthcare professional, most of my work is in the moment, but as a medical writer I can leave a lasting legacy or be part of launching a new medicine or educating different audences.
  • As a medical writer, I need to learn about health and medical topics in depth from credible sources before I write about them. This will improve my clinical practice as a healthcare professional.
  • I appreciate that medical writing is the foundation of health and medical information that we consume and use as healthcare professionals, and I would love to be part of that process.
  • I enjoy the creative side of medical writing, such as social media marketing campaigns and storytelling, and working with designers. We often do not get the opportunity to be creative as healthcare professionals, so I really look forward to this.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years as a medical writer?

  • I want to have gained enough skills and experience to progress from medical writer to senior medical writer, and ultimately teach other medical writers or manage a team of writers.
  • I would like to manage projects and build closer relationships with clients so we can have continued long-term business with them.
  • I’m interested in doing a part-time Masters/PhD/other official course to develop my skills as a medical writer, to the benefit of the company, and would be interested in discussing sponsorship for this.

How would you write for different audiences?

  • The reading age of an audience is important to consider. For example, a patient reading health information may not understand complex words, so I would have to explain them like I was writing for a 10 year old. But for healthcare professionals, unless it is a new medical term, I can write in a more technical way and using academic language because I know they have the educational background to understand this.
  • The tone of voice is also important, because you need to consider being empathetic and sensitive if it is a more serious topic, such as how to handle grief. But if you write for a younger crowd, maybe you want to encourage them to get tested or vaccinated for a disease so you may want to sound more persuasive.
  • The type of medical writing will dictate how you write too. For example, you may want a conversational tone for a video script, or use a more technical standardised way of writing for clinical trial protocol documents.
  • The length of writing and format will matter based on where you publish it. For example, a social media post will need an opening line that captures attention (known as the “hook”), and possibly bullet points to be easy to skim. However, a blog post will need many headings and bullet points to be easy to read on a phone screen.

What skills do you need to become a medical writer?

How to find credible sources of information

Medical writing is evidence-based, so you must be able to find credible sources of information is, and determine how robust it is. This is the “evidence” that you point to when somebody asks you if what you are writing about is actually true.

For example, a randomised controlled double-blind trial (RCT) is known as the “gold standard” especially if the sample size (number of people in the trial) is large and diverse (so it will apply to most people). However, you might want to reference an official guideline instead, such as from NICE, or their Clinical Knowledge Summaries (CKS) series.

The information you reference for your medical writing needs to be relevant, and recent (depending on what you are writing, and the guidelines you need to follow for your client). For example, as an evidence checker for the NHS.uk website, the sources I use need to be less than 3 years old to support the information I am checking.

An “evidence hierarchy” does exist, and it looks something like this in most cases (with 1 being the most credible source of information):

  1. Human randomised controlled double-blind trials with a large and diverse sample size (number of participants)
  2. Human trials with a large sample size
  3. Human trials with small sample sizes
  4. Meta-analysis of trials and other research
  5. Systematic reviews of trials and other research
  6. Official publications from high authority health organisations, such as the NHS, NICE, GMC, WHO, GOV.UK, BNF
  7. Non-promotional publications that show they have been written and reviewed by a healthcare professional or expert in the field (this could be a website blog)
  8. Publications from charities (there is likely to be an element of bias here, because they want support to fund their research, so they are often the least trusted)
  9. Anecdotal evidence – such as a single account of something that happened, for example, a rare allergic reaction in five people after taking a new medicine
  10. Asking a subject matter expert directly (a single source is not usually a robust source of credible information, because they may have their own bias. It will be an opinion.)
  11. Research that talks about animal studies or pre-clinical trials (we cannot directly extrapolate this information to humans!)
  12. Anything that was clearly paid for as a promotional piece (such as a candy company funding research into why sugar is not bad for you), without a named author, written 100% by AI, or without credible sources of information (avoid this tier at all costs!). This includes newspaper articles (they sell stories, and are often unfortunately inaccurate).

How to reference sources of information

As a general rule, when you reference a source of information, you need to state the author, the date of publication, where it was published, and when you accessed it.

For example: Xeno et al, The link between heart disease and smoking, page 2, Nature, 2010, accessed March 2025.

  • Xeno et al shows the main author is Xeno, and et al shows there were other authors involved (which makes the source of information mor credible).
  • The link between heart disease and smoking is the name of the research paper.
  • Page 2 is the specific page you would look at to find the information referenced.
  • Nature is the publication.
  • 2010 is the year it was published.
  • Accessed March 2025 is the date you, as the writer, found the information and used it for your medical writing.

There are different styles of references in medical writing, and it depends on the type of writing you do. For example, writing for a journal will require a specific standardised citation that you can copy and paste from the website that you access. You might be asked to reference using the “Harvard system” or “Vancouver system”. You can find out more here.

For example, on this website page https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK53010/ you can click “Cite this page” to get this:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US); National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (US); Office on Smoking and Health (US). How Tobacco Smoke Causes Disease: The Biology and Behavioral Basis for Smoking-Attributable Disease: A Report of the Surgeon General. Atlanta (GA): Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US); 2010. 5, Cancer. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK53010/

Or on PubMed on this article https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34015143/ you can click “Cite” to get this:

Weber MF, Sarich PEA, Vaneckova P, Wade S, Egger S, Ngo P, Joshy G, Goldsbury DE, Yap S, Feletto E, Vassallo A, Laaksonen MA, Grogan P, O’Connell DL, Banks E, Canfell K. Cancer incidence and cancer death in relation to tobacco smoking in a population-based Australian cohort study. Int J Cancer. 2021 Sep 1;149(5):1076-1088. doi: 10.1002/ijc.33685. Epub 2021 May 31. PMID: 34015143.

For a blog article on the internet, you could copy and paste the URL link of a website that you accessed, and add the date you accessed it. Always state the title of the page. For example, here the author is the NHS, Hay fever is the title:

NHS, Hay fever, https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/hay-fever/ accessed March 2025.

Always follow the style guide provided by your client, and double check with them if you are unsure.

Make sure your list of references at the end of your document (or at the bottom of a page as a footnote) are in the order they appear in the document (chronological order), and numbered. So your first reference is cited as “1” in your reference list, and there is a “1” in the sentence you wrote in reference to it.

For example, “Even low levels of alcohol consumption is linked to causing cancer [1]”

Instead of the [1] here, you may want to cite the specific author of the reference, for example “Anderson et al, 2023”, and use [Anderson et al, 2023] instead. However, in your reference list you would write:

  1. Anderson, Benjamin O et al.
    Health and cancer risks associated with low levels of alcohol consumption
    The Lancet Public Health, Volume 8, Issue 1, e6 – e7, January 2023
    Accessed March 2025

Sometimes, citations in text are written as a superscript like this 1 or this Anderson et al, 2023

There is software you can use to manage your references, such as EndNote, ProCite, and RefWorks, so when you download a citation, you might be given a specific file type (such as .ris) to link your citations and references in the document easily.

How to structure a document

When I first started medical writing, I had no idea how to structure a document. I needed to learn what a hierarchy of information is. This means looking at different types of headings, for example, a H1 heading is at the top, and then H2 headings sit under that, and any subheadings would be a H3 and those sit under their respective H2 headings. It was quite difficult to grasp at first, but it helped me understand how information is structured and that it directly translates to how we read pages on the internet (either websites or social media).

For example, if you have a page about colours, your H1 (there is only one H1) would be “colours” then your H2 would be different types of colours, and under each H2 you would have H3 headings that break down that H2 even further:

H1: Colours

H2: Red

H3: What is red?

H3: How red pigments are sourced

H2: Orange

H3: What is orange?

H3: How orange pigments are sourced

It wouldn’t make any sense if you had a H3 talking about orange under the H2 talking about red. The reader needs to be able to find information that is relevant quickly and easily.

Structure also depends on the type of writing. With a research paper, you need sections in the right order, including an abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conflict of interest statement.

For a whitepaper, you need an introduction (state the problem), background (research), proposed solution, conclusion. Usually, a whitepaper is created to convince someone you are a “thought leader” and you include whatever you sell as the solution to the problem (and the research is supposed to back this up).

For educational content, you usually have an introduction (to explain what the topic is and why the reader should learn about it), then you have objectives (what you will teach them) and outcomes (what the reader should be able to do after learning from you).

For slide decks and longer pieces of writing, you may need to include a contents page at the beginning.

For journalism and news articles, you want to include the most important information at the very beginning including the “who, what, how, why and when”. Information becomes less important and more likely to be cut out by the editor to fit the publication.

For video scripts, you need an introduction, and then either a storytelling structure, or clear segments for the video (such as answering specific questions, or a list of items like “5 ways to..”), then a conclusion and a call to action at the end.

For leaflets, posters, and other visual documents, you will need to work closely with the designer to find out how many characters you can write to fit the design.

Whatever you write, references usually appear at the very end at the bottom.

Writing and sharing documents online

There are two ways to share documents when you write, either as a link through a “cloud” like Google Docs or Microsoft 360, or you attach a copy of the document to an email and send it to the client.

With a document in the “cloud”, this means you can have multiple people working on a document at the same time, and everyone can see the history of work you have done. Some people find this quite stressful, because it doesn’t count the time you spend researching/reading and thinking about what you are going to write.

Reading age of your writing

Everyone has different levels of education, and you need to consider this when you write so your reader can understand what you have written. We call this the “reading age” of your writing. So the lower the reading age, the easier it is to understand your writing.

For patients and the public, and children, the reading age needs to be low. In the UK, according to the NHS content guidelines, aim for a reading age of between 9 and 11 years old. You want to avoid being too technical in your writing, and this means explaining any medical words you use. This does not mean leaving them out completely, because health literacy means you are educating as well as explaining. For example, you can write hypertension, then explain that this is high blood pressure, then explain what this means for their health.

For academic writing, the reading age can be much higher, because your readers will be used to technical writing and complex words/concepts.

If you want to check the reading age of your writing, copy and paste your writing into these online tools. The lowest reading grade of zero means it is very easy to read:

Or, if you are on Microsoft word, you can check the reading age by going to “Home” then “Editor” then at the bottom, under “Insights”, click “Document stats” to get a readability score based on “Flesch”. In this case, the higher the score, the easier it is to read (with 100 being the maximum score).

Here’s a helpful tool from a Health Literacy workshop I attended with Leanne Kirkup. It’s called BETTY, which is an acronym to encourage you to make your writing easier to read for patients:

  • B – break it down – try to explain everything in a simple way
  • E – everyday words – use words people are familiar with
  • T – talk to a friend – be kind, helpful and friendly in your tone
  • T – take stuff out – try to be concise (reading is effort!)
  • Y – you, we and I – say who is doing what, so it’s clear

However, use these tools only as a guide. You do not want to have super short sentences all the time, or only use words that are two syllables. The best way to test your writing is to actually give it to a person (known as your “user”) to read it and ask them for feedback about how easy it is to read. There is a lot of user research and user testing that can go into medical writing, so ask your client if they have relevant data to support how you write something. This includes the style of writing or use of specific words.

Numerical literacy

Some people do not understand fractions or percentages and find numbers difficult to understand (they have low numerical literacy). So try to use whole numbers that match up, or describe numbers with real life situations.

For example, you could say 1 in 10 people like the colour orange, and 2 in 10 people like the colour blue. You should not say 1 in 10 people like the colour orange, and 20% of people like the colour blue, as you are not comparing like-for-like forms of numbers.

You could describe how many people in a bus will be affected by something, for example, if a person with measles gets on a full bus, around half the people on a bus will catch the virus if none of them were vaccinated. This visually explains a situation without using numbers.

How to explain “risk” without being scary (or inaccurate)

When you describe the “risk” of something, use the absolute risk, rather than the relative risk. You will see newspapers with headlines like “You are twice as likely to get cancer if you take the pill” and this is uses relative risk which can sound scary.

The newspaper will have seen the absolute risk here: “1 in 1000 women will get breast cancer if they never take the pill, but 2 out of 1000 women will get breast cancer if they take the pill” but decided to compare the two (create a relative risk) and say “double” because the 1 in 1000 became 2 in 1000.

So avoid using relative risk (where you compare two numbers) unless you state the absolute risk first (when you look at each number separately).

Medical writing is regulated: Know the rules!

Medical writing is heavily regulated, and there are rules that decide how you say something, what you can say, and who you can say it to.

For example, you cannot advertise or share information about prescription only medicines (POMs) with patients and the public, but you can with healthcare professionals specifically. And this is specific to the UK. There are different rules depending on the country of the client you write for.

I needed to learn about the ABPI Code (it gets updated every year), which explains how pharmaceutical companies share information and what they can and can’t do when they interact with patients and healthcare professionals. Read it here: https://www.abpi.org.uk/reputation/abpi-2024-code-of-practice/

The PMCPA publishes case studies of when people breach the ABPI Code – you should read these to learn from other peoples’ mistakes. Read them here: https://www.pmcpa.org.uk/cases/

There is The Blue Guide and PAGB guides for advertising over the counter medicines to consumers (patients and the public) and healthcare professionals.

And last but not least, there is the ASA and CAP when it comes to advertising standards. Everyone is governed by the MHRA (who also release case studies of people breaking medicine advertising rules).

Following content guidelines

When writing content for patients and the public, there are NHS content guidelines which can be helpful to follow. They include how to phrase certain words and have done extensive user research to support their findings. It’s so important to user test your medical writing if you can, and then make edits before you publish it. Otherwise, it may damage you or your client’s reputation.

Sometimes, your client will provide content guidelines or a “style guide” with specific words or phrases you need to use (such as a “call to action” at the end of a blog like “book an appointment today” or “donate now”). Usually, there will be user research to support their guidelines (just like the NHS). They might include a “tone of voice” guide with examples of what they want the writing to “sound” like. For example, is it a casual/chatty tone of voice, where you write like you speak? Or is it more authoritative, and serious, because you are delivering sensitive news to someone?

There may be claims that have been approved by the legal team too, such as “works twice as fast for pain compared to standard paracetamol”. So if you are unsure whether you can say something, always ask the client.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

If you are writing for social media, websites, or pretty much anything on the internet, search engine optimisation (SEO) is a skill you have to know. SEO means you write keywords in certain places such as within headings (H1, H2 and H3), or meta data (the description of your webpage, usually under 150 characters).

SEO can get quite technical (with coding, such as Schema) as it’s not only about keywords, but as a writer, the words are your area of expertise. An SEO team can guide you, but it’s an advantage to know it yourself too.

You can have a go at searching for keywords using an SEO tools which tell you how popular keywords are. Look at AhRefs (where I was featured in an article about Healthcare SEO in 2024), SEMrush, Moz, or UberSuggest and Answer the Public.

A keyword can be a single word, or a phrase. For example, “Does alcohol cause cancer?” could be a keyword. If there are a lot of searches for it per month, then an SEO tool will tell you this based on the “volume” of searches.

There are tools like SurferSEO and ClearScope that help you map out an article with SEO keywords, and then you write it. (Unfortunately, the use of AI means there are a lot of low quality articles on the internet because it lacks a human touch!)

Social media websites are becoming search engines in their own right, such as YouTube and TikTok (soon to be followed by Instagram), because there’s just a lot of content on the internet, and nobody has been organising it in the same way search engines have (like Google). However, some people are using AI to search for information, and this is also based on keywords.

Including links in your writing can help improve SEO, and there are two types. Links that link to other pages on the same website (inlinks), and links that link to other pages on different websites (backlinks). Whenever you link to someone else, that’s a backlink to them which boosts their authority on the topic (and vice versa).

Avoid copy and pasting links into your writing, instead you want to use “anchor text” this is the text you highlight and then hyperlink. The anchor text should not say “click here” as that’s not helpful for the reader. Try to write a description, such as “learn more about acne treatments” and hyperlink that to the page you want the reader to go to.

You may also need to write “alt text” for photos, which is a description of an image.

However, not all backlinks are equal – you want high authority websites to link back to you, so you can “rank” higher. This means appearing at the top of the search engine results page (SERP) on Google or on a social media search results page (shall we call that a SMERP?).

SEO is not just about writing and letting it sit there forever, you do need to revisit that piece of work and update it to maintain your ranking. Otherwise, someone will come along with new and shiny (more up to date) information, and take your spot.

People also ask experts for a “quote” to include in their article to help improve SEO. Everything together increases the “EEAT” of an article, which is the Expertise, Experience, Authority, and Trust that contributes to the SEO (EEAT is a known structure Google pushes).

Content management systems

When you are involved in projects, you may use a content management system such as ASANA or TRELLO. These are often blocks that you add tasks to, and you may be assigned work through these systems. They help keep you organised, and you can comment directly on blocks to ask questions directly to your team, so all the information about that project or that piece of content will be in one place (and not your email inbox).

You’ll be able to email people by simply using @ and their name tag, which can make it easier to manage tasks.

If you’re unfamiliar with content management systems, I recommend you sign up for a free version of ASANA or TRELLO and click around to see how they work.

Recording time spent on your work

Sometimes, you will need to write how many hours you have spent working on a project and put that in a “timesheet” to get paid each month (this is usually if you work in a medical communications agency). These may form the basis of a “performance review” at work in future, so try to make them as accurate as possible.

Always keep your own separate record of your achievements at work, so you can easily update your CV and your portfolio of work (and ask for a raise!)

Insurance and liability

If you ever work as a medical writer, try to make sure your client has insurance that covers you for your work (and not that you will “indemnify” them). You can buy professional indemnity insurance, the same way you get insurance as a pharmacist. You may want to consider buying insurance to protect your equipment (such as your laptop) and your business.

If you do want to freelance as a medical writer, I suggest you do it under a business name (register for about £30 on HMRC), rather than your personal name because then you have limited liability (that’s what the Ltd is for in business names). Note: This is not legal advice, and I recommend you chat to a lawyer for more information.

How to find a medical writing job

What to include on your medical writing CV

A CV needs to include the following:

  • Your contact details
  • Your location (and if you are willing to relocate)
  • Link to LinkedIn profile
  • Link to your portfolio
  • What you are looking for
  • List of digital tools you can use, such as Microsoft Word or Google Docs.
  • Work experience (with the most recent at the top)
  • Education (with the most recent at the top)
  • Hobbies

Here is an example of a CV for someone who is just getting started as a medical writer:

—-

Curriculum Vitae March 2025
Mrs Virginia Chachati (MPharm)
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/virginiachachati/

Email: [email protected] Website/Portfolio: www.virginiachachati.com

  • Registered Pharmacist with UK General Pharmaceutical Council Professional (GPhC)
    Registration Number: 2087654
  • Looking for medical writing roles to write patient education materials, either full-time or part-time, prefer to work remotely or hybrid, willing to relocate

Current roles

Freelance medical writer, since January 2025

  • Writing product pages for an online doctor website to help inform patients before they fill in a form for a consultation.
  • Writing patient friendly blogs to answer common questions using search engine optimisation (SEO) and working with the website team to make sure articles are accessible and easy to read on mobile phones.
  • Writing scripts and producing educational videos for the public on YouTube as “Pharmacist Virginia” for the NHS

Locum pharmacist, since 2014

  • Responsible pharmacist for a variety of pharmacies in London

Previous roles

  • 2013 to 2014 – Pre-registration pharmacist in London
  • 2008 to 2013 – Over the counter assistant in pharmacies across London

Education

2013 UCL London School of Pharmacy Master of Pharmacy Degree (2:1)

  • 77% in Meta-analysis dissertation: Orlistat induced weight-loss in adults with type II diabetes
  • Specialist module Pharmacognosy: Medicinal use of plants
  • Specialist module Cancer: Mechanism of disease and treatment

2008 A-levels: Chemistry (A), Maths (A), Biology (A) AS-level: Product Design Textiles (A)

2006 GCSEs: 11 subjects grade A* to A

Software & Digital Competencies

Video conferencing (Zoom, Google meets, Microsoft Teams)Adobe Premier Pro and Filmora video editing  WordPress websitesHemingwayapp
SlackHubSpotAdobe Reader  Canva (design, video, animation)YouTubeMicrosoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) Google Docs  
SEMRush (SEO)  Asana (workflow) 

Hobbies & Interests

Learning how to do/make things (video editing, public speaking, photography), reading good books, gardening, hiking, baking cakes.

—–

What to include in a cover letter for a medical writing job

A cover letter needs to include 5 main paragraphs:

  1. Who you are and the role you are applying for
  2. Relevant experience/skills you have that fit the job description
  3. Why you want to work with the company/client (what do you like specifically about them? Have you looked at their portfolio/team/work culture/values?)
  4. What you can bring to the company (why should they hire you?)
  5. How to contact you

Here is an example of a cover letter for someone who has zero medical writing experience:

Dear Kyshawn,

I’m Virginia Chachati and I’m applying for the position of medical copywriter at Health Agency.

As a registered pharmacist in the UK, I understand medical terms and can easily simplify complex technical information for a variety of audiences. This is a key skill I will use to write patient education materials you require.

I saw your team recently took part in a patient education campaign to show them how to use their inhalers properly. This really resonated with me, as I show patients this first hand in the pharmacy, and I would love to be involved in campaigns that support patients in future.

On a recent away day, I saw that you emphasised the importance of team building and levelling up skills through education. Personal and professional development is important to me, so it is wonderful to see you value this too.

As a pharmacist, I believe I can bring my experiences from the pharmacy directly into my writing. This unique perspective will provide insights for the team when they consider how healthcare professionals use health information to support patients with their care.

To discuss this role further, please email me at [email protected]

Thank you for considering my application and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,

Virginia Chachati

Where to find recruiters for medical writing jobs

A recruiter is a person who is paid to find a person to do a specific job. Medical writers are technical writers and need specific skills to do a good job. So some companies will hire a recruiter to find a medical writer, and they will pay the recruiter once they find a medical writer that meets the job description.

Do you need to join an association as a medical writer?

  • Only join associations for networking or learning opportunities. Being in an association does not increase your chances of getting a job.
  • Getting a certificate from a medical writing association is unlikely to increase your chances of getting a job, depending on the course contents.
  • There are no conferences specifically for medical writers or medical communicators outside of associations, and these can be very expensive (£700+ for a ticket)
  • Join the free LinkedIn group “Medical Writing for Beginners and Beyond” here: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9110350/   

Websites to find medical writing jobs

  • LinkedIn – hands down the best place to find work as a medical writer, there is now a big community there and I mostly get work through other medical writers.
    • Connect directly with recruiters and set up a call to tell them what you’re looking for. There are recruiters for freelancers and recruiters separately for full-time job placements.
    • You can click the LinkedIn jobs icon and then use filter to narrow down your search for jobs. Avoid using “Easy Apply” on LinkedIn jobs, and instead try to get a video call or phone call with the recruiter/manager that is advertising.
  • Freelance platforms such as UpWork and YunoJuno.
  • Job websites that you typically use, such as Indeed and Monster.

Who hires medical writers?

  • Pharmaceutical companies
  • Agencies (healthcare communications, medical communications, marketing agencies)
  • Charities
  • Publishers (including websites/newspapers/magazines)
  • Media companies (including scriptwriting for videos or films)
  • Universities and other educational institutes
  • Healthcare brands
  • Healthcare organisations or the government (such as MHRA)
  • Other medical writers – as a community of writers, we often work together or refer clients to each other if we cannot do the job (it might be a type of medical writing we do not usually do, or maybe you are too busy, ill or on holiday)


How can you break into medical writing after university or find an entry level job?

There are graduate schemes, usually with pharmaceutical companies or biotech companies looking for medical writers. You might find internship opportunities at agencies, or entry-level roles at start-ups. Entry-level roles can be difficult to get into. You can look for “associate medical writer” or “associate scientific writer” on job websites.

If you want a few pieces of work for your portfolio, and some testimonials, I recommend you volunteer to write for a charity or non-profit. You could consider doing a small job on a platform like UpWork (even if it doesn’t pay much). The point is, someone hired you to do a job, and you need to do a good job to get a recommendation from them so you can show this to future potential clients to get more work.

What is the difference between freelance medical writing and working as an employed medical writer?

Income

You will have stable income when employed, but you may earn more as a freelancer if the right client with a big budget comes along. In my experience, being a freelancer can lead to more anxiety about money until you have several long term clients.

Time spent working

When employed, you often need to record your hours on a timesheet, and often overtime is not paid. As a freelancer, you can choose when you work and how much you work, as long as you deliver your work on time to your client.

Typical work day

As an employee, you often spend time in meetings with your team and with clients. There’s probably a little more politics at work, and your hours are set (usually 9am to 5pm or later). As a freelancer, you choose your work hours, and as long as you get the work done, there are no questions asked. However, you need to protect your time as a freelancer because you are not “paid” for taking a meeting or answering emails. So prioritise getting project work done. When freelancing, you need to spend some time marketing yourself online (through social media posts or otherwise).

Relationship building

When employed, you build relationships with your colleagues. But once you or they leave, that relationship usually ends. As a freelancer, you are constantly and consciously building long term relationships with most people you meet so you can be top of mind for future work projects.

Benefits

Employees get paid when they are on holiday, including bank holidays, and they often get insurance as part of their pay packet. Freelancers do not get paid when they take “time off work”. However, you can travel off-season as a freelancer so flight tickets can be cheaper, and you avoid peak tourist times (such as school holidays). Freelancers have to pay for their own insurance to do their job, and their own equipment, but these are tax deductible.

Job security

I’ve been made redundant twice because the market for writers can be unpredictable, and this means businesses have to make cuts. So your job as an employee is not very secure, and it depends on the type of medical writing you do. I recommend you negotiate a 2 month notice period.

As a freelancer, you work for your clients, but they can cut a project at any time (this has also happened to me!). While this is unpleasant, you can reduce your chances of being left with zero income by having 4 or 5 clients at the same time, and make sure you replace them as soon as a project ends. Never stop marketing yourself online, even if it’s one post per week on LinkedIn, just to make sure people are aware of you and your skills.

Where can you learn how to become a medical writer?

To learn more about medical writing, check out Write Clinic. There are also several books you could read to learn more to improve your writing, but it depends on the type of writing you want to learn about. I can make some recommendations if you want to learn about medical copywriting.

Courses at Write Clinic are made specifically for healthcare professionals to help you kickstart your career as a medical writer and repurpose your skills. You will get direct feedback from Virginia Chachati, who has been a medical writer since 2020 and worked with the NHS, WHO, and YouTube Health. She is a UK registered pharmacist, the Founder of the International Medical Writers Association (IMWA), Medical Writing Uncut podcast, and Medical Writer Magazine (MWM).

Courses include:

  • Medical copywriting for beginners
  • Regulatory medical writing for beginners
  • SEO (search engine optimisation) for medical writers
  • How to create a medical writing portfolio (an essential for applying to jobs!)
  • How to create a website (in case your social media profile disappears!)
  • How to create a LinkedIn profile to attract recruiters and clients
  • How to find clients as a freelance medical writer
  • How to find a medical writing job (as an employee)
  • How to pass a medical writing test (with 5 real life examples)
  • How to ace your interview
  • How to manage your finances
  • Master your work-life balance
  • Canva skills for beginners (to help you with marketing yourself visually)
  • How to write scripts for health videos (because of the big boom in video content!)

Feel free to email me if you want to chat about medical writing or you want help with which course to choose. My email is [email protected] (I usually respond within 24 hours).

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