Profession

A reader chooses here by the side of working life a question is about: their own career, a freelance business, a team they lead, the buying and selling of writing services, mentoring and teaching others, their working conditions and health, the footprint of their own practice, the professional community, or the profession as a whole. This branch leaves the competences every document draws on, from the language to the way a single document is produced, to foundations, the obligations that govern the work to ethics of the work, what sustainability means and healthcare's own footprint to sustainability in healthcare, and the documents, rules and ways of working of each area of practice to areas of practice.

• Building a career — one writer's own path through the profession: getting in and what a background brings, what to study and which credentials and certifications count, the competences expected, applying for jobs, the range of the work and choosing a specialism, developing once inside, the online presence, what the work pays, and planning the next post, moving into management, returning to employment after freelancing, redundancy and retiring
• Freelance practice — working as an independent writer: whether you are ready, setting the practice up, finding and keeping clients, the agreement and the price, and running the business, from the routine, tax and machines to taking on other writers and growing the practice into a company
• Leading a writing team — the team from the side of whoever builds and runs it: the in-house function, the roles and levels, putting a competency model to work, hiring writers and editors, onboarding, training and continuing learning, internship and apprentice programmes, keeping writers, setting expectations and what a manager owes the team
• Commissioning and vendor relationships — medical writing bought and sold between organisations: choosing a provider, answering a request for proposal, turning a supplier's account into a trusted partnership, and what the supplying agencies took up together
• Mentoring and teaching — developing other writers, one to one or in a group: finding a mentor and being one, the relationship, schemes and coaching, and teaching courses, workshops and longer programmes
• Working conditions and your own health — your health as a working condition: stress, resilience, burnout, sleep, sitting and attention; and the working arrangements: the working day and week, working from home, isolation, caring, enjoyment, and what the 2020 pandemic did to the work
• Sustainability in a writer's own practice — the footprint of the writer's own work: why it is a professional duty, taking up sustainability work, measuring the footprint and setting a target, cutting the footprint of the working practice and of digital work, and what a client asks of a supplier
• The professional community — the bodies writers belong to, the events the profession gathers at, and the communities no association runs: joining and using an association, taking part in its chapters, groups, journal and competitions, finding a conference or a call for papers, conferences and learning events from the attendee's and the organiser's side, other bodies' meetings, and local and online communities
• The profession as a whole — who it is and how it is seen, from whether its writers are scientists, its gender and its history to its visibility to outsiders, research on the profession itself, and the profession beyond one country: its international market, standards and voice, and the profession country by country