Generative AI models like ChatGPT and Bard have given rise to the creation of lots of crappy content because some of these articles are AI-generated, characterized by inaccuracies, biases, and risk of copyright infringement. You will pay the price if you make the mistakes outlined in this blog.

This blog provides a quick guide on the most common mistakes to avoid when hiring a freelance medical writer, locally and overseas. It includes recommendations on best practices to consider before hiring a medical writer.

1. Hiring a Freelance Medical Writer without Adequate Domain Knowledge

Essentially, writing can be attributed to professionals working in the journalism and media fields because that is what most of them go to college to study. Most of these writers have specialized in certain fields such as politics, health and wellness, economics, or legal topics.

Despite the lack of standard entry requirements, hire medical writers with at least a college degree in your project field. Best medical writers have a medical or life sciences background. Below is the reason for this.

Health writing often include researching and writing about complex medical terminologies which must be expressed and simplified to fit the target audiences. These audiences have a varied level of understanding of these medical terms.

Therefore, a health writer with a medical or life science background has a decent command of medical terminologies and language. This ability allows them to research on health topics and write authoritatively for the respective audience.

2. Hiring a Writer without Relevant Training in Medical Writing

Medical writing is also a skill that can be learned and perfected over time. Even though there are limited college degrees and diplomas specific to medical writing, ensure you hire medical writers with proper training in the craft.

Universities such as the University of Chicago and Stanford University, as well as e-learning platforms like Udemy and Coursera, provide specialization courses on medical and scientific writing. The European Medical Writers Association (EMWA) and the American Medical Writers Association (AMWA) offer similar opportunities for training, certification, and continuous improvement in medical writing.

When evaluating a prospective freelance medical writer’s resume or portfolio, consider writers with extra training and certifications in medical writing. These courses demonstrate that the writer has been trained on essential medical writing standards, including grammar and usage, medical terminology and language use, writing ethics, fundamentals of different types of medical writing, referencing and formatting styles, communicating statistics, and editing.

I have utilized these opportunities to learn and improve on certain details of medical writing.

3. Single-Skilled Medical Writers

It is undeniable that your writing needs will require more than one input skill.

For example, when looking for a medical writer to write your journal manuscript, there are some additional aspects you need beyond writing. For instance, you must create infographics, analyze, visualize, interpret the data, and design other graphical presentations. The same applies to blogs, whereby the writer should be good at SEO and copywriting or digital marketing skills.

Therefore, hire writers with comprehensive medical writing skills to save on the costs, time, and effort of hiring several writers. You will not have to return to job boards to look for talents on other project deliverables.

4. Not Reviewing the Writer’s Samples and Portfolio

Do not hire a medical writer just because you are impressed with their academic and professional credentials. The current technology has made it difficult to determine if these credentials are correct.

The best way is to evaluate the writer’s portfolio and samples(1). A portfolio can be a personal website where the writer has displayed their sample projects and a career profile. Similarly, you can ask for the writer’s sample files or links to their previous projects. An additional tip is to give the writer a few paid projects and evaluate their ability based on an actual project with you before signing a contract with the writer.

When assessing the samples or portfolio, look at their writing abilities beyond grammar and spelling. Consider other writing essentials like accuracy, readability, and demonstrable subject matter expertise. This is also a great way to determine the writer’s actual medical writing experience.

5. Failing to Pay Attention to the Writer’s Other Commitments

A freelance medical writer can operate either full-time or part-time, often dictated by their other commitments besides writing. When hiring a freelance medical writer, look for things like their employment status in relation to your project needs.

Part-time freelancers could be engaged in other employment obligations. In contrast, a full-time freelance medical writer is focused solely on providing medical writing solutions.

When you frequently need a medical writer or have short deadlines for your projects, consider a full-timer or someone without extra full-time commitments like employment. Part-timers may have other obligations restricting them from collaborating with your team or being unavailable to complete urgent jobs.

6. Hiring General Writers

General writers work on various topics, from politics and business to health care, culture, history, football, and travel. However, these general writers may take longer to grasp intricate subject details and lack in-depth knowledge of medical topics, leading to less accurate and nuanced content.

Hence, consider writers who have specialized in medical writing. Specialized medical writers have in-depth knowledge and an adequate understanding of health and scientific writing. Specialization allows these writers to write well-targeted, high-quality health content for your task.

There is also another group of specialized medical writers called specialized generalists. They offer greater value because they can work on a wide range of medical writing projects. For instance, they create CE/CME monographs and write consumer and patient health education content, e-books, and other marketing resources.

Conclusion

As indicated above, you should consider several critical elements when hiring a freelance health writer. Most of these details cut across various health and life sciences subsectors regarding medical or scientific content writing and publishing. In brief, to be sure with the writer you are hiring:

Hire medical writers with domain knowledge in a medical or life science field.
Consider candidates with relevant training and certification in medical writing.
Hire multiskilled freelance medical writers
Examine the writer’s medical writing portfolio and samples
Choose full-time over part-timer for urgent and more frequent roles
Specialized (or specialized generalists) medical writers are better than generalists

If hiring a freelance medical writer is sounding like a complex adventure, don’t worry. Regardless of the medical writing type you need for your project or business, I would like to give you an ultimate solution and help you navigate the above challenges. Send me a quote via Premierlance Contact and I will explain how I am an ideal talent for your project needs.