Working as a medical writer, I love the fact that my work is so varied; on any given day I can be involved in projects across a variety of different therapy areas, from cardiology, cardio-renal medicine, oncology and radiology to rare diseases, women’s health and HIV medicine. The pace is often fast as we strive to meet deadlines and prepare a wide range of different, high quality materials for documents, symposia, webinars, infographics and websites.
An important part of our work within the medical team also lies in the creation of scientific manuscripts. Here, we work together with scientists, healthcare professionals, statisticians and clients to prepare detailed and accurate publications. The content can be varied, but typically publications either present the results and key findings of clinical trials or review the known literature within a given topic area. The aim is to bring all the information together into a cohesive story which can help HCPs, scientists, policy makers, patients and the public understand the mode of action, efficacy and safety data for new treatments. In contrast to traditional medical education work, working on scientific manuscripts is a much longer process, and it can take many months to progress though to a final published article.
As medical writers, we start by reviewing complex clinical trial data and/or conducting a thorough search of the existing literature of the field. We then build on this to create an outline for the manuscript and draft figures and tables to illustrate the data. Next, the outline undergoes critical review by the authors and we build in feedback to create the first draft. After this, the manuscript undergoes several additional rounds of reviews, with the authors feeding in at each stage. There is often a huge amount of data to synthesise and it can be a challenge to pull out the most relevant information, so a detailed and methodical approach is required. It can be difficult to maintain momentum on a complex manuscript over such a long timeframe, and the medical writer needs to be able to pivot quickly to include any unexpected results as they develop, such as any new adverse events arising during manuscript development. Once the article is finalised, it is submitted to a peer review journal. Journals such as NEJM and the Lancet have very high standards for published articles, and the manuscript usually undergoes several rounds of peer review. At this stage, the work is scrutinised by experts and the medical writer needs to ensure changes are made in order to address any recommendations before the article will be accepted. This process serves to improve the quality of the work, but it can be difficult to respond to reviewer comments whilst staying on track and ensuring the original message is not lost.
It is a real privilege to work together with very dedicated teams of scientists, HCPs, statisticians and clients to develop manuscripts and it is rewarding to be able to play a small part in ensuring all the hard work translates into articles that can inform the development and optimisation of treatments for patients. Most of all, it is humbling to recognise the incredible bravery of the clinical trial participants who put themselves forwards to improve our knowledge and help to find new therapeutic approaches, not only for themselves and their families, but also for future generations.