Anyone work in med communications/medical writing on here?

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I'm a Medical Writer working in Med Ed, but I'm thinking of moving into publications.

Does anyone have any experience on working in publications, and has any insight into what it's like vs working in Med Ed/commercial accounts? Thank you

I work in medcomms but on the client service team and not editorial. I have worked on both medical education, publications, commercial (drug brand launch) and med affairs. The type of content medical writers develop on those accounts vary hugely. It depends on what you're interested in to be honest. I've had writers on my team who have HATED publications account and have preferred developing more creative content. Publications can get a bit "samesy". Whether you like it will depend on the therapy area, the client and the team. H

Thank you, that was incredibly helpful!

It's so difficult trying to work out if publications would be a good fit for me or not. My current company doesn't do any publications work so I've not been able to get any exposure to it. I do enjoy some of the commercial side of my job, and getting to work on 'short and snappy' content, which surprised me as I wouldn't say I'm a creative kind of person.

Are there any particular reasons why some writers hate publications, apart from it getting a bit repetitive?

Regular MNer but have name changed for this.

I’ve worked across all different types of med comms accts/deliverables. Started out life as a Medical Writer. Publications work can be a bit slower paced than med ed etc, although not always - it can also be a mad house, depending on the client (congress publications in particular can be an absolute blur). Writing on publications means you tend to spend more time working on your own than in other types of med writing: as the writer you just have to get your head down and draft that long form prose. There are often less moving parts to connect than in eg development or meetings and training materials, so it can be more about getting the writing done than about collaborating with colleagues. There are obviously exceptions to this, such as if you become involved in strategjc publications planning. Pubs writers also need to become extremely confident in their technical and scientific knowledge of the drug/TA (I’m not saying other writers don’t need an in depth knowledge, they do, but in pubs it is more about the TA knowledge and less about the messaging, although that does come in, of course).

I realised I’ve possibly made it sound like pubs work is miserable and lonely! I don’t think it is at all, if the team is right there are still lots of opportunities to bond with team mates etc, there is just a different flavour to it. I think it is a great thing to have done a bit of pubs, and the writers I know who have are generally better writers for it (it is technically exacting in a different way to other work); if you are interested, I would recommend trying it for a bit to add it to your arsenal, it doesn’t have to be forever.