How to Transition From the Laboratory to Medical Writing

Perhaps you’ve been working every day in a laboratory for several years and want to explore a new career that gives you the flexibility to work from home. Perhaps you’ve had writing tasks as part of your laboratory career, but project demands don’t allow you to further develop your skills in this area. Whatever the reason, you have decided that you want to make the transition from the bench to medical writing, but you don’t know where to start.

You are not alone. There are many laboratory scientists, including myself, who have asked how to transition from the bench to medical writing. The first step is not to get overwhelmed by the idea of transitioning. Laboratory careers provide an excellent opportunity for you to develop an understanding of the health care, biotechnology, and medical device industries. This is valuable to all types of companies. In addition, many laboratory roles involve technical writing that is very similar to the writing duties performed by medical writers. Finally, laboratory careers allow you to develop skills in time management, communication, teamwork, and accepting constructive feedback, all of which are skills that are critical for a career in medical writing.

Take a look at your résumé and recall the writing components of each of your jobs. If your résumé primary summarizes laboratory experiments, then reformat your résumé so that it places a main focus on the writing you completed at each position and reserve only one line to summarize laboratory work, if possible. Perhaps you wrote or edited a lot of SOPs during each of your positions. Perhaps you analyzed data and summarized data findings using Excel or PowerPoint. Perhaps you wrote and gave presentations about your research to team members during project meetings. All of this work is relevant to medical writing. If you haven’t done any medical writing as part of your laboratory career, then try exploring internship opportunities. Social media platforms, such as Indeed or LinkedIn, inform the public about internship as well as part-time or full-time career opportunities. The AMWA jobs section is also an excellent resource for members to explore current internship opportunities.

Once you have your résumé reformatted, determine what career path(s) your résumé aligns with and ensure that the chosen path(s) match your interests in medical writing. If your roles have involved mentorship and you found that to be rewarding, also take note of this because it will be important in selecting a career path. The AMWA Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Medical Writer gives a list of possible career paths for medical writers. Once you have your area(s) of focus determined, then you can begin searching for current career opportunities that match those area(s.)

Best of luck to you in transitioning to a rewarding career!

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank fellow AMWA members Laura Shum, Dana Barberio, Sophie Ash, and William Brown for responding to my “How to Transition from the Lab Bench to Medical Writing” post on the AMWA Engage forum and sharing their insights with me as to how to make this transition.