TOP WAYS TO MAKE MONEY WITH MEDICAL WRITING!

Yes, you just got clickbaited. I apologize but I have to blame Diarmuid De Faoite, he explicitly told me to do that.

I know you’re now wondering what in the world this article is. Let me explain.

My name is Lorenzo and I’m a young Italian general practitioner. Well, in reality I’m still in training and I’ll get the proper title in a couple of years but, honestly, who cares?

The point is that I studied to be a clinician, I trained on flesh and bone folks for 9 years, thinking I was going to save the world with my own hands. Do you know the feeling? You spend hours in the hospital, all dressed up in fancy medical uniforms, rushing from the E.R. to the operating room… doing absolutely nothing. Yes, sure, you learn things, you get some skills and all the training stuff and blah blah blah. But you’re not really working. You have no responsibilities. People always smile at you, because you’re the nice young student, the pure soul who takes care of them. You’re tired? You go home. Something goes wrong? Oops, it is the doctor’s fault, not mine.

I loved it so much I fooled myself, thinking my entire life was going to be like that.

Then I started working. I mean, I got a proper employment. And suddenly the nice young student turned into the nervous inexperienced doctor. The lovely old patient became the aggressive man who just wants his prescription and can’t care less of my opinion. I realized working at night, on Saturdays and Sundays, on Easter and Christmas didn’t make me a hero. It made me the guy who works when others party and has free time when no one’s around. 

I quickly found myself tired and alone in my room, reconsidering my whole life. Was I on the right pathway? That’s when I decided to do the only possible thing to face this situation. I packed few things, quit my job and started traveling around the world in search of my true self.

Just kidding, I had zero money and a protective mother, I could at the very best go out for a pizza. So I googled the words “what can I do with a medical degree apart being a doctor”. And that’s how I got into medical writing!

As I’m more of an active guy, I didn’t want to spend much time looking for information online. I found EMWA website and read about the Warsaw Conference, right there ready for me. At 3 pm I had never heard the words “medical writing” in my entire life. Ten minutes later I was a member of the European Medical Writers Association. Cool, isn’t it? And guess what, in this very moment I’m writing an editorial for their website, while I’m still trying to figure out the difference between regulatory writing and medical communications. No wasted time, uh?

Ok now I’m rereading this text. Damn, I had to write something “related to the world of medical writing”. Did I miss the point? I mean, all I know about it is this story I’m sharing. I hope it can get accepted, I desperately need these EMWA credits. I have to become a medical writer. Please, dr. De Faoite, I beg you! Don’t send me back to the clinic, I can’t stand a sick person anymore.

So, I know this is not the most useful editorial in the world and surely you won’t become a richer medical writer following my advice. But maybe you had a laugh, a little relief during a hard work day. Or maybe you feel the relief reading about someone more desperate than you are. Don’t try to hide the feeling, I know it’s kind of evil but it is right there in your mind.

As credible as I can get at the end of this, I’m seriously considering medical writing as a possibility for my career. I loved EMWA Conference in Warsaw more than I expected: interesting topics, nice people… I really felt positive about my future for the first time in years! Maybe this occasion I took by chance is really going to change my life… let’s put in some serious work and find out if it was worth it!

See you at the next EMWA conference!

Lorenzo Paonessa