Leaving clinical practice for medical writing
Leaving clinical practice for writing can preserve scientific and patient-facing skills while changing the demands of work. The transition involves weighing health and family pressures, learning unfamiliar writing methods and, for some clinicians, negotiating a combination of practice and writing.
Reasons for leaving clinical practice
One doctor trained in general surgery and otolaryngology before becoming a GP because he enjoyed a broader range of medicine. After ten years combining four days a week in general practice with one day as an ENT hospital practitioner, he stopped practising because stress was affecting his health. A gap year, a general MBA and work as a primary-care-trust project manager preceded an unexpected recruitment approach for a medical-communications agency role. He spent five years at a small agency before becoming freelance in 2013.
Another GP had chosen the specialism partly for family life, enjoyed partnership but found it extremely demanding, sometimes leaving at 10 p.m. and working weekends. Time at home caring for her infant son in 2017 made the stress of her working life clearer and prompted exploration of other interests, including writing a book. She described contemplating a career outside traditional medicine as isolating and frightening because it departed from long-held expectations.
One psychiatric nurse left after 15 years, having completed a master's in public health while working in an increasingly under-resourced community team. She wanted flexibility without abandoning clinical skills, found medical writing through an online search and discovered that the softer skills she had feared would disadvantage her could be useful.
A South African doctor described wanting to leave clinical medicine after an exhausting rural-hospital internship. Her workload included trauma calls, up to ten emergency caesareans in a night and a paediatric ward of 60 children where at least three developed respiratory distress each night. She also experienced needle-stick injuries and an infection acquired from a patient that required hospital admission six days before her contract ended. Searching for other uses of her degree introduced her to medical writing.
Transferable clinical skills
Nursing's assessment, planning, care delivery and evaluation involve weighing evidence, prioritising conflicting information and judging its strength; these analytical skills also support reviewing complex data and presenting it clearly for an audience. Accountability to professional standards likewise carries into writing, and nurses with research experience may already know clinical reports, protocols and ethical requirements. A former nurse recommended further education such as a master's in public health for foundations in epidemiology, statistics, health systems and clear manuscript development. She also stressed that laboratory skills were not necessary for entry, although biomedical experience could help with genomic or cellular studies, and advised building knowledge around each new project.
Clinical contact can help a writer understand patients as trial participants, including perspectives gained through prolonged nursing care at vulnerable times. Nurses and other clinicians may recognise subtle cues unfamiliar to writers without that experience; reading about communication can help with theory but does not replace face-to-face patient dialogue. One former nurse made this understanding central to a personalised writing service for clients and end users, and reported in 2018 that clients were beginning to recognise its value.
The transition into work
The South African doctor reported that there was no established local medical-writing industry when she began applying, and more than 100 applications to Europe and the United States brought objections about her lack of experience, location and travel restrictions. A remote vacancy on EMWA's job board led to a video interview, a writing sample and a job with a small European medical-communications agency. During her first year she worked from Thailand, the United States, Indonesia, South Africa and Denmark.
Her first assignment exposed gaps in Word review functions, referencing software and statistics despite her medical degree. Resigning to travel without a plan then left her without income or sufficient mental stimulation. She took a medical-insurance consultancy role, volunteered to revise and write white papers and create disease-management programmes, and accepted a permanent post within six months, but later left while burnt out and dealing with her mother's illness. A fixed-term medical-adviser contract also ended after two months as the family illness worsened. She subsequently combined freelance medical writing and advisory work for South African and international clients, judging her reach through assessed cases, manuscripts, patient communications and digital projects greater than it had been in clinical practice.
Combining practice with writing
A careers-event organiser described interest among doctors in writing as a secondary professional activity and income source as well as a full career change. A participant's question illustrated the difficulty: advertised roles appeared to require an all-or-nothing commitment rather than fitting a portfolio career.
A former GP suggested approaching larger agencies with a proposal to retain one or two days of clinical practice and write for the agency for three days a week. He thought some might value an actively practising clinician and suggested specialist healthcare recruiters as another potential source of opportunities or contacts. Another GP took online journalism courses and proposed columns and articles to general magazines and a personal-growth website, finding editors receptive. Her advice was to propose the work and desired conditions directly while remaining open to negotiation, rather than assuming an elaborate approach was necessary.
One non-clinician careers-event organiser's impression was that doctors often underestimated the transferability of their skills and employers' regard for them, underselling themselves or withdrawing before applying.
Writing skills beyond a clinical qualification
A dentist who had practised in India faced a career change after settling in Switzerland. Blogging about expatriate life and dentistry helped her recognise writing as an option, and she discovered medical writing and EMWA in 2017. EMWA's free resources introduced different areas of writing; unfamiliar regulatory terminology initially led her toward medical communications.
She had read papers for clinical decisions but had never written a research article or thesis, so she developed editing, proofreading, scientific-methodology and research-reporting skills. Because many competing applicants and likely hiring managers held PhDs, she studied the skills presented in Cheeky Scientist's programme for PhDs entering industry.
After repeated rejections, she attended the May 2019 EMWA conference in Vienna, adapted her pitch to each conversation and corrected mistakes through discussions with subject experts. The workshop and conversations helped restore her confidence. Her advice was to persist through rejection and self-doubt, relinquish reliance on the title Doctor and address missing skills directly.