Careers in Medical Writing

In the last month, I have had the pleasure of being invited to two careers events at local universities here in Montreal. The first was the Science Career day organized by Career and Placement Services at Concordia University. The second was an information evening on careers in science writing hosted by the Graduate Students Association for Neuroscience at McGill University. It was fabulous to see so many students interested in medical writing as a career.

As I mentioned at both events, the demand for science and medical writers is growing. South of the border, the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics says that writing is consistently a strongly employable field. It also goes a step further, commenting specifically that demand for writers with expertise in science is medicine will increase in coming years because of the “continuing expansion of scientific and technical information and the need to communicate it to others,” especially for a general audience.

A relatively recent Services Canada Occupational Outlook (2006-2008) states that writing careers in Quebec continue to benefit from the “strong performance posted by the information and professional, scientific and technical services industries.” They cite specialty information channels and the Internet as being strongly responsible for the growth. During the same period, the unemployment rate in all writing fields in Quebec, including creative and translation, was less than 3%. It did not break down prospects or unemployment rates into individual writing fields, but no matter how you look at it, odds are pretty good that if you have the credentials and the talent, there should be no shortage of work.

I've uploaded onto Slideshare the presentation I made with Nathalie Ross at the GSAN event. I hope you find it useful!

Careers in Medical Writing

Intro to Medical Writing Presentation

Last June I was honoured to co-present a workshop on medical writing at the PWAC annual conference with fellow medical writer Giancarlo La Giorgia. In the presentation we discussed the scope of medical writing, what it takes to break into and succeed in the field, some basic tools of the trade, and some tips for finding work.

Here are the slides from the presentation. We hope you find it useful.

Medical Writing 101 (PWAC)

View more presentations from Amanda Strong.

Five Golden Rules of PowerPoint

I think most of us have heard the expression "death by PowerPoint," yet despite our awareness of how excruciatingly painful a bad PowerPoint presentation can be, many of us still make them. Whether it's CME presentations, rep training programs, or marketing strategy pitches, we've all seen the eye-glazers.

A lot has been written on how to create a good PowerPoint presentation. Here are my top five things to keep in mind:

1. Make sure that your presentation has a point and a structure, and that each slide supports both.
2. Avoid clutter. Neither the presentation nor the slide should be cluttered. (Unless, of course, the clutter is a prop for the point.) Use only a few fonts, colours and layouts.
3. Allow only one key message per slide. The message should be clear and any text or imagery on the slide should support it.
4. Use the slide to augment and reinforce what you're saying, not to reiterate it. Don't duplicate what you're saying on the slide. People read faster than you talk.
5. Create handouts from the notes section, not the slides. This helps keep your slides crisp and focused. Besides, you can actually put more information in the notes sections than you ever could on the slide itself.

Do you have a golden PowerPoint rule, or set of rules? Share them with us. Leave a comment or drop me a note.