Using an association's webinars and continuing education
A professional association supplies its members with continuing education: training and courses, its journal, knowledge of the market they work in, and a webinar programme whose recordings build up into an archive for members.
Courses and training an association supplies
Continuing education may include certificate and non-certificate courses or workshops, online or in-person training, self-paced or one-to-one training, perhaps over Skype, email or another platform, and webinars, which are online presentations given in real time. Professional associations often schedule training, and may also ensure that it is of a high standard. Organisations may also offer online courses and webinars, which are an excellent opportunity to learn without leaving the office, and in 2013 EMWA was exploring them as an adjunct to its in-person workshops.
Quite a few EMWA members provide training courses themselves, and these are sometimes advertised on the association's website, in a section for training courses other than EMWA's own. Other associations, such as the DIA and AMWA, also offer training.
In 2011 AMWA's newest member benefit was a library of free mini tutorials, called pocket trainings, developed by AMWA members on topics useful to medical communicators. A pocket training may be a PDF, a slide presentation, a podcast or a multimedia presentation. By then three had been posted: "Editing and Organizing References in EndNote", "Editing Text and Reviewing Comments in Adobe Acrobat" and "Making the Most of Your Ad in the AMWA Freelance Directory". Members could contribute a pocket training by first completing a proposal form posted on the website.
The association's journal
EMWA's quarterly journal, Medical Writing, is a source of information from other medical writers on how to write different types of document. Each issue has a different theme, and older issues can be found online. One EMWA speaker holds that its articles can answer most of a writer's questions. Joining EMWA brings the journal every three months and access to the restricted area of the website, which holds a great deal of very useful information.
Keeping up with the industry
Professionals are frequently recommended to learn as much as possible about the industries and companies that need, or may need, their services. Whether a writer works in-house or freelance, knowledge of the market provides a competitive advantage and assists professional growth, and keeping abreast of current trends and the latest industry news is vital. Industry education and research should therefore be a daily activity, not postponed for more pressing matters. Professional associations can help with this by providing access to industry publications, databases of company information, news about legislative issues affecting the field, and salary studies that help establish standards of pay and benefits, such as the three-yearly survey EMWA publishes. Subscribing to an association's news alerts and publications, or to a discussion group such as EMWA's LinkedIn group, is important for remaining fully informed about the profession. Following fellow members' accounts on LinkedIn and other social media, as well as the association's own, may also be useful, because members working in the same field may pass on interesting news from that field.
Live webinars
Attending a webinar is itself training, in which a writer learns how things are done in other companies and organisations, and so is attending conferences, workshops and other training programmes. EMWA has offered a series of monthly webinars, an opportunity to learn without leaving the office and without any cost. In 2023 EMWA held webinars every month as well as two conferences and many workshops, which together make a large source of learning and training.
EMWA's webinar programme is run within its Professional Development Committee, which in 2020 had a webinar team and co-leads for the programme.
EMWA states that its webinars help members develop skills and keep up to date with new or rapidly developing areas. Most are live online seminars in which participants can ask questions or otherwise take part. In December 2020 and March 2024, all a member needed for a live webinar was to register with their EMWA membership details. In March 2025, September 2025 and March 2026, webinar access was reserved for EMWA members and required registration. In December 2020 the programme page carried previews of the webinars planned for 2021, and in March 2025, September 2025 and March 2026 it listed the planned and past webinars.
By 2007, more than 400 AMWA members had attended the association's first webinar, on what was new in the 10th edition of the AMA Manual of Style, simply by clicking a link and dialling the phone. The webinar was free to members, and it was recorded and made available on the AMWA website.
The webinar archive
In 2023 EMWA's webinars were recorded, and each reached the members' archive on the association's website soon after the event. In 2023 the archive held every webinar from the previous eight years, free to all members, and EMWA's webinar moderators commended it as a reference for anyone looking for a particular discussion or wanting to deepen their knowledge of an area. In June 2023 its subjects included professional techniques, presentations, using LinkedIn, issues with clients, protocols, statistics, management, freelancing and veterinary subjects. In December 2023 they included professional techniques, finding clients, protocol development, statistics, management, freelancing, veterinary information, pharmacovigilance, medical devices, running conferences, following guidelines, journalism and sustainability.
In July 2016 EMWA's webinar series included a joint webinar with AMWA on CORE Reference and how it can help medical writers prepare compliant clinical study reports, and in August a webinar on how to solve formatting problems in Microsoft Word. Both were then available in the archive section of the website for members who had missed them, and EMWA's president urged members to investigate the archive as a valuable resource.