What the practice is called and how it presents itself
A practice's company name identifies the business, while its professional description explains the work and the writer's relationship with clients. Different audiences may need different descriptions.
Professional descriptions
A useful professional description closely matches the services offered: medical writer, freelance medical journalist, freelance medical editor or medical communications consultant. Describing the work itself, such as regulatory writing for pharmaceutical companies, can come before explaining the freelance or independent working arrangement.
The description can change with the audience: “freelance medical writer” among colleagues, the president of an incorporated medical communications company with clients, or an independent writer under contract to a named agency when meeting that agency's client. Describing an incorporated company can signal that the business is established, while “professional medical writer” is another description used with clients. An email signature saying “Contract Medical Writer” has also been used to clarify the relationship for people who otherwise assumed the writer was an employee.
A 2011 exchange among experienced freelances offered competing views of the word “freelance”. One position favoured “independent medical writer/editor” or a company description as conveying greater professionalism and permanence, using “freelance” for the way of working rather than as the professional identity. Another preferred “freelance writer/editor” as clear, simple and effective, regarding “independent” as redundant and awkward. An LLC owner could therefore introduce the service as freelance writing while recording the legal business structure in marketing materials.
A writer with more than twenty-five years' freelance experience saw no benefit in changing that description and had seen no evidence that the word's alleged negative connotations discouraged clients from using association directories or opportunities lists. That writer nevertheless used a company name and “specialist in healthcare communication” on business cards because it seemed more appropriate there. Another writer's card used only the person's name and “Writing and Editing”, while professional bodies assigned their own membership category rather than leaving the choice to the member. One participant proposed research into how hiring organisations perceived the different terms to inform the choice beyond writers' own preferences.
Stereotypes and recognition
The freelance label encompasses varied working arrangements, from temporary self-employment between jobs to a continuing single-client business or a voluntary multi-client practice, and tasks from simple online micro-work to statistical analysis and protocol development. This breadth can make “freelance medical writer” require further explanation when speaking to people outside the profession.
Related descriptions include self-employed worker, contingent worker, independent professional, independent contractor, digital nomad, on-demand worker, solopreneur and microentrepreneur. In a 2019 practitioner's account, some professionals preferred “solopreneur” to emphasise entrepreneurship and distance themselves from assumptions of abundant free time or a relaxed lifestyle. The word “free” does not remove time pressure or professional responsibility. That practitioner regarded general freelance stereotypes as inapplicable to professional medical writers. The reported obstacle was social recognition rather than simple unfamiliarity with the existence of freelance work.
The company name
A memorable company name can still be difficult to use: Scripsi Scriptum Ltd was remembered as intended, but spelling out its email address over the telephone proved troublesome. The business was renamed Bham Pharma Ltd, drawing BHAM from “Bringing Home A Modern Pharma” and also using the founder's surname. The founder also associated the choice with an intended remote-working model across current and future businesses.