So what can the individual medical student do to improve his or her writing? What can teaching institutions do to encourage more sophisticated writing among their students?
Where are the MD-trained Medical Writers? Part II
Author :
David Keleti
So what can the individual medical student do to improve his or her writing? What can teaching institutions do to encourage more sophisticated writing among their students?
1) Join a research laboratory for the summer. Many, if not most, medical schools offer students the opportunity to perform research for a summer. It is a great opportunity to learn about lab culture and basic science, which will help students become more accomplished writers. After all, even the most clinically-based journal articles require a combination of both clinical and basic scientific content.
2) Write as often as you can. The best prevention against writer’s block is continual writing. The only time that I develop this serious but nonfatal condition is when: 1) I have begun writing in a new therapeutic area for which I am not very familiar; and 2) I have not written content for an extended period of time.
The best prevention for this is to be involved in writing and more writing. If you are currently in a lab, write a grant proposal or manuscript. If you are attending a conference, search online for any medical blogs that are willing to pay a few hundred dollars for articles covering conference news (blogs will rarely cover the cost of the conference or travel, so it is expected that you are already attending the conference). You might even consider writing your own blog.
3) Upgrade your biological science education. When asked about my oncology experience (which was very limited until quite recently), I reply that I previously worked as a laboratory-based scientist studying cell signaling and that most oncology can be understood in the context of a signaling malfunction at its most basic level. This is true for many, if not most, pathologies.
Put another way, the biological context of any pathology is critical for the proper understanding of the basis of any disease. More important than memorizing the nearly limitless pathways involved in cell signaling is a clear understanding of the common principles that will come into play in most cell signaling pathways (e.g. feedback mechanisms, amplification, etc.).
Just as an individual student can improve his or her writing, medical schools can foster better writing among their students by assigning more written reports in lieu of multiple choice examinations. In short, good medical writing comes from years of practice (not a doctoral degree) and as such requires the attention of all budding medical writers.
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