Download the slide presentation "Introduction to Medical Writing", by clicking here. These slides include the elements of good medical writing: in this topic we are exploring the goal of the medical writer, and every writer, to target your audience.
Audience analysis
Advertisements work if the content reaches the audience (an unbroadcast speech given in a cave will not reach the target audience in an office 3 miles away) and if the content is right for the audience.
Readability formulae are often loved by clients, they claim to calculate who can understand what you have written (12 year olds, adults, 6 year olds). All they do is calculate the length of words and how many words are in sentences. Maybe they are useful. Tom Lang thinks they are absurd. Read about them here, all 3 of them, http://www.readabilityformulas.com/free-readability-formula-assessment.php
Assignments:
1. Watch the advertisement linked to from here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExgYQ5fhhzg
In 200 words, explain who is the target audience in an advertisement, read the PI for the HIV drugs Gilead is selling. No drug is mentioned, but Gilead is one of the biggest manufacturers of HIV drugs, and this is all about getting persons infected with HIV to take these drugs. You will have to look at the manufacturers website and search for "prescribing information", and say what the messages are in the advertisement and which drugs are being advertised.
2. Do a medline search on drugs for persons infected with HIV, and summarize the abstracts by deleting everything from the abstract that is not data. Examples of these are given in MJoTA, such as this one on diethylene glycol, which can be downloaded here.
3. Write an essay for a general audience from an article that you have prepared for a professional audience in which you have assumed a basic level of knowledge and understanding. Maybe you know a very old person, or a very young person, who is very bright and curious, but lacks training in science or health and does not understand technical terms.
4. Watch a video advertisement for a drug prescribed for GERD.
5. The FDA website on manufacturers advertising products that are made to improve or maintain health. These are guidances for manufacturers, draft means the FDA has not finalized the guidance, so the previous finalized guidance is still in effect https://www.fda.gov/Drugs/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/Guidances/ucm064956.htm
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