Consensus statements
A consensus statement raises four questions for a medical writer: what it is, how it differs from a guideline, what the writer does on one, and where the work is found. How one initiative ran a consensus process, from planning its summit to publishing the statements, is in collaborative writing. Health technology guidance covers what an assessment body publishes at the end of an appraisal, choosing and using a reporting guideline the reporting standards a study report follows, and review articles writing a review of the published evidence.
Know what a consensus statement is
The account of consensus statements comes from a report, in AMWA's journal, of an open session on lesser-known writing opportunities at the association's 2013 annual conference, at which a senior medical writer and editor described the form and the work around it. The session's premise was that many medical writers specialise in clinical study reports, standard response letters and regulatory dossiers, and the panel's purpose was to show writers the work that exists outside that set. The session's other two subjects, documents for health technology assessment agencies and value dossiers, are in health technology assessment submissions. The report ran in the Spring 2014 issue of the AMWA Journal (volume 29, number 1), which was admitted from an existing Markdown conversion without content repair, in which figure labels can be inlined into prose, cover and contents columns can interleave, and reference URLs can be malformed or truncated.
A consensus statement is a comprehensive analysis by a panel of experts of a scientific or medical issue, representing that panel's collective analysis, evaluation and opinion based on the best available evidence. Such statements are developed through one or more of four consensus methodologies.
Keep the statement and the guideline apart
A consensus statement requires a defined process and reporting strategy, but it remains an expert panel's opinion and is not a guideline. The speaker's list of what a medical writer should know about consensus statements has six points: they are not guidelines, which have more defined standards; they provide valuable but limited information; there are no clear standards for them, though that could change; they are popular as outcomes of conferences or as reports from specialty societies; they are popular with local groups trying to make a difference; and they can benefit from having a medical writer on the team. The speaker emphasised that writers need to understand how a consensus statement differs from a guideline.
Expect the role to run from budget to publication
The medical writer's role on a consensus statement is to work with the expert group to determine budget and planning through to publication. Writers working on consensus statements should also have project and people management skills.
Look where statements are already being produced
Consensus statements offer repeat work because they have to be updated periodically, and the speaker's suggestions for finding that work start from the documents that precede them: check conferences for working-group reports that could be developed into consensus statements or guidelines, and seek opportunities through specialty societies in the writer's area of interest and through health advocacy groups.
The session's table of potential publishers of consensus statements sorts the market into four categories with an example of each: government agencies, the examples being the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence; clinical specialty societies, the example being the American College of Chest Physicians; disease and health advocacy groups, the example being the American Diabetes Association; and commercial companies and institutions, the example being payers such as Medicare, Aetna and UnitedHealthcare. The conversion interleaves that table's columns, so each category is paired with its example from adjacent fragments rather than read off a single row.