Currently a Medical Writer but need to do something else, any advice please

[dontknowwhattodoooo]

I'm currently a Medical Writer in an entry-level role. I'm not enjoying my job and need to pivot to something else but I have no idea what.

I like the flexibility and variety of my job, e.g. I get given several tasks and deadlines but I have flexibility over what I do when. I also like that I can work from home most of the time. I also like that I have a mixture of longer tasks where I need to concentrate and shorter little tasks too.

However, I dislike the office environment. I don't like all the meetings on Zoom and having to present work to clients (I find the client side of things really stressful). I don't feel like I'm doing any good in the world just helping make money.

I've always been drawn to jobs that help others, e.g. teaching and nursing. But I struggle with public speaking and I'm really squeamish so neither of those options are right. I don't like lab work (I have experience in a research lab and in an NHS lab and disliked both).

Does anyone have any ideas or advice? I've been looking at jobs constantly but feel trapped in my current job as I can't find anything else to go for instead.

Drugs company - sales rep or medical team
Teaching (teaching isn’t public speaking??)
Physio / Radiographer / OT etc
Medical charities
NHS management
Medical start up

Tricky, OP. Most jobs are not about doing any good in the world, just making money.

A flexible, non-office job that helps people, but that does not involve lab work or gore...therapist/counsellor? Community gardener? Medical engineer (servicing medical devices)? Some kind of NHS technologist (radiographer, blood manufacturing)?

Some times the best thing to do is to try it and see. Reach out to someone already in the role/try to organise some work experience (yes, super weird as an adult. But you only live once.)

It sounds like you are a medical writer for a medical communications agency? If so, have you considered becoming a medical writer for the drug development stage instead - writing clinical study reports and other regulatory documents? Presentations aren’t generally required, particularly if you work for a pharma company, and you may feel like you are making more of a difference at the development stage.

Agree with the above.
There’s huge demand for regulatory medical writers. You’ll have to lead discussion meetings on the documents, but no presentations.
You could chose the therapy area you work in or work for a company specialising in rare diseases as examples of roles that might feel more meaningful.
If you like writing, I wouldn’t throw out medical writing just yet.

All our Medical Writers are working from home and we’re in Clinical Trials so definitely doing some good in the World.
You could try a different company?

Yes, I currently work in a healthcare comms agency, so it's more of the marketing side of things

I do want to try regulatory writing, but I've been it difficult to find roles to apply for as they often require experience writing regulatory documents (which I don't have experience with)

It can be hard to get into entry-level positions in regulatory medical writing but your the experience gained from your current job may help. If you haven’t already done so, maybe try looking at the EMWA website, which may have some useful information, or contacting medical writing recruitment agencies, to see if they can help.

“but the experience”

Thank you, I've now reached out to some recruitment agencies

I think my biggest priority is to have less client contact - do you think that's something I could ask the recruitment agency to help with? I'd rather be in the background writing/editing rather than presenting, even if it means taking a pay decrease

You may be best trying to get into a Pharma company then rather than a consultancy-type environment.
In a Pharma company you would write the simpler, more routine documents when you first start out. Much less interaction with the team. Often you’d just draft the documents, have the team review them and address any comments without the need for a team meeting. You could work up to the more involved submission documents in the future, if you wanted.
If you’re good with Word and want to be in the background, some bigger Pharma companies have teams that are responsible for formatting the documents ready for submission (sometimes called Doc Tech). Might be an option, but takes you away from actual writing.

When I was a regulatory medical writer, there were never really any presentations involve. In my experience, most of my time was spent getting my head down to concentrate on working on large complex documents, with the occasional online meeting to discuss progress. More senior writers possibly had to do the odd presentation as part of project management responsibilities but most calls would just be discussions, with people chipping in where necessary.

I’m not particularly outgoing and hate doing presentations but I one of the reasons that I stopped being a medical writer was that there was too little interaction with others, although I work in an aligned area now and sometimes still get called on to write the odd document when the medical writers are busy, as I have the experience.

I’m a copywriter, although not a medical one. I had a freelance job a few years back which was rewriting medication literature as EasyRead documents, to make them more accessible to people with a low reading age or a learning disability. Essentially, helping people better understand about the medication they were prescribed.

It was an interesting job and felt like it was worthwhile; certainly more so than flogging Pepsi or Volvos which was my normal stock-in-trade back then.

It’s probably the kind of work that goes out freelance, because it usually only needs to be done once. But if you could find work like that, within your field of expertise, perhaps it might scratch the itch a bit?