MJoTA.org

Who is a medical writer?

Watch video and read article on medical writing on this on http://www.mjota.org/medicalwritingresources/whatismedicalwriting.html

Rhetoric

Aristotle defined rhetoric several thousand years ago, and he got it right: his definition stands. Simply, rhetoric is the art of persuading humans. Everything you will write or edit as a medical writer is to persuade humans.  Articles from Stanford University Encyclopedia of Philosophy on rhetoric, download one on Aristotle's rhetoric here and one on Plato's rhetoric. here Yes, the Greeks had language all figured out, they really did. Read Aristotle's book. http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/rhetoric.mb.txt

Data

Medical writing is all about presenting data in a form that is understandable by the target audience. The target audience for CME (continuing medical education required for health professionals to keep their licenses) is different than the target audience of a PPI (patient prescribing information, the paper inside the drug package that has been prepared from the PI, prescribing information). Medical writing, and all kinds of writing, is for human beings. You need to know who your audience is and write to them. Do not condescend or patronize. Talk to his or her humanity. Article on data from WHO.

Presenting data that you did not write is plagiarism. Read an article on plagiarism in the pharmaceutical industry.

Grammar and style

Read the very small textbook from cover to cover: Strunk and White. It costs about $7 new. If you want to read its precursor, published 1918, which can be downloaded, link to http://www.bartleby.com/141/

Read every day all New York Times health columns. You will learn a lot about diseases, treatments, and writing styles. These articles are written for well-educated non-science trained professionals.

Format and styles in MS Word

You need to know how to fix text in different styles and headings so when you need to create a TOC (table of contents) and a TOF (Tables of figures) and a TOT (Table of TAbles), you know how to do this automatically. I recommend you work your way through ALL of the Microsoft tutorials. These change from time to time. You will be sent the link to a relevant video available now.

Typing

If you are charging by the hour, you can charge your clients more if you type quickly. If you are on a tight deadline, you cant be spending hours figuring out where each letter is. Learn how to type without looking at the computer screen, learn how to touch type. You will be sent the link.

Infant mortality

Infant mortality is the canary in the coal mine. If women are healthy, healthy babies are born and survive childhood. Read this article on infant mortality.

Read an article about infant mortality in Sierra Leone at http://www.mjota.org/images/mjota2009vol3no6SierraLeoneMortality.pdf

Assignment:

Write an article describing what can be done to improve maternal mortality. What would you do to increase the chances of women surviving childbirth in Sierra Leone? Include the reasons for high mortality in Sierra Leone. What rhetorical techniques can you learn from Aristotle that will be effective in convincing a philanthropic organization that their resources could be better used combating maternal mortality? Your sole data sources are the 2 articles given you to read. This is an exercise on handling data.

If you have a data source that focuses on a country you have a greater interest in, you are welcome to write about that data and that country. You must submit with your article your data sources.

OR

Write an article about which countries in Africa are endemic with malaria, according to the CDC, and which drugs can be used for malaria. Use just this source, http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/travelers/country_table/n.html

OR

Write about maternal mortality in your country, or choose a country. Use an official document compiled with data written by an official agency, such as an agency of the Indian government, or WHO, and first discuss with te instructor the document you will use as your source document.