Veterinary Medical Writing - Special Interest Group

The Veterinary Special Interest Group (vetSIG) was founded in 2019 to raise awareness of Medical Writing in the Veterinary Community

vetSIG objectives

• provide a forum for EMWA members (in 2021 also for non-members) to discuss and share information in the area of veterinary medical writing
• Present and illuminate the broad and diverse area of Veterinary Medical Writing
• Encourage veterinarians as well as others to get in touch

Organisation (as of May 2021)

• Co-chairs: Cemile Jakupoglu, Henry Smith
• Committee members: Jennifer Freymann, Miyuki Tauchi, Louisa Marcombes
• Supporting members: Beatrix Doer, Sandra Götsch-Schmidt, Jenifer Bell, Karim Montasser
• Veterinary section editors for Medical Writing (EMWA Journal): Louisa Marcombes, Jenifer Bell

Regular activities

The vetSIG hosts the “Meet & Share” session on the last Friday of January, April, July and October to discuss current topics of interest.
Our regular activities include:

• Planning and development of new EMWA workshops and other educational offerings (Expert Seminar Series and webinars)
• Contributing to the Veterinary Section in the EMWA journal Medical Writing
• Providing networking opportunities virtually and at EMWA conferences.

Get involved

All EMWA members interested in veterinary medical writing and networking with like-minded colleagues are welcome to join us. To receive an invitation to join our quarterly meetings, please send an e-mail to: vets@emwa.org

Quarterly Meeting

We hold a virtual meeting at 3 pm Central European Time (for the season) on the last Friday of every quarter (January, April, July, October). Please contact vets@emwa.org for further details. Starting in 2021, we aim to includes “tasters of veterinary medical writing” in our meetings, in which individual members present something of interest from their own field of work.

Previous meetings

The topics covered in the first two quarterly meetings of 2021 were career entry paths into veterinary medical writing (January) and communicating of evidence-based veterinary medicine, with the use of honey for wound-healing as an example (April).
Don’t worry if you missed the meetings! Starting April 2021, we are making observer reports of previous meetings available from the link below.

An observer report for the April 2021 meeting can be found here: 

An observer report for the July 2021 meeting (including meeting slides) can be found here: 

Future meetings

Our next meeting will be held on Friday, October 29th, 2021 at 15:00 (3 pm) Central European r time. The “writing taster” and main item is a talk by Matthew Krecic, DVM, MS, MBA, DACVIM titled Veterinary Medical Communication: A North American Perspective. Matthew is the President of the American Association of Industry Veterinarians (AAIV), Publications and Communications Manager at Xeris Pharmaceuticals, and sole proprietor of K-File Medical Writing and Editing Services, LLC. He will talk about AAIV and comment on his experiences in veterinary medical writing. As the second topic (time permitting), we will discuss the recent controversial case of Geronimo the Alpaca and is positive bovine TB result, and what this case means for veterinary medical writers/

Our first quarterly meeting of 2022 will be held on Friday, January 28th at 15:00 (3 pm) Central European time. Louisa Marcombes will lead a discussion on veterinarians who write (or talk) about humans. We hope many members will contribute to this discussion based on their own experiences.

vetSIG Resources

Overview
https://journal.emwa.org/artificial-intelligence-and-digital-health/medical-communications-and-writing-for-patients/ (A short field guide to veterinary medical writing by Cemile Jakupoglu and Sandra Götsch in Medical Communications and Writing for Patients section of Medical Writing, December 2019)

Veterinary regulatory writing
https://www.vichsec.org/en/
https://journal.emwa.org/non-clinical-health-writing/veterinary-regulatory-writing-in-europe/
https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/veterinary-regulatory/overview/veterinary-medicines-regulation

Evidence-based veterinary medicine
http://www.ebvmlearning.org/
https://knowledge.rcvs.org.uk/evidence-based-veterinary-medicine/what-is-ebvm/

Case report writing / Case series writing
https://bmcvetres.biomedcentral.com/submission-guidelines/preparing-your-manuscript/case-report
https://www.avma.org/sites/default/files/2019-11/JAVMA-Guidance-for-Case-Series-Reporting.pdf

Systematic Review in animal research
https://www.radboudumc.nl/en/research/departments/health-evidence/systematic-review-center-for-laboratory-animal-experimentation

NC3Rs (National Centre for the Replacement, Reduction and Refinement of Animals Research)
https://nc3rs.org.uk

The vetSIG Story So Far … 

EMWA’s veterinary medical communication special interest group was founded at the 2019 spring conference. A group of eight veterinarians came together at that conference. Realising just how many vets and vet-related medial writers were active across EMWA, they set up a group to meet, share information, and hold discussions across the wide-ranging area of veterinary medical communication.

EMWA’s president, Dr. Beatrix Dörr (herself a veterinarian!) has described the group as “vets and friends of vets”. Currently, we consist of about 30 “vets and friends of vets”, and that umbrella term covers veterinarians who treat pets and farm animals, vets doing veterinary or human regulatory writing for (V)ICH submissions, , vets writing for government and EU officials on public health, for pet owners and farmers, for the general public, vets teaching future vets, vets researching just about anything, and medical writers getting involved in any of these activities.

Our quarterly meetings have covered a range of topics from writing case studies, career entry and development, and One Health to the regulatory writing under the aegis of International Cooperation on Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Registration of Veterinary Medicinal Products (VICH). From April 2021, we aim to include a “taster of veterinary medical communication” in meetings. Each taster is a short a talk delivered by one member about some aspect of veterinary medical communication. Meetings will also feature short questions on terminology conundrums.

As well as the meetings, we have our own section in Medical Writing, EMWA’s journal. Please see the “What we write for EMWA members” section for quick links and summary of our output

vetSIG Training and Education

There is one workshop in EMWA’s “Basics of Veterinary Regulatory Affairs” in the EPDC program
See: http://filemaker.emwa.org/workshops/view_workshop.php?recid=1526

Dr. Cemile Jakupoglu gave a webinar entitled: “Veterinary articles for scientific journals: Case Report”
See:View past webinars (Member login required)

Dr. Sandra Götsch gave a webinar entitled: Veterinary medical writing - same but different

Who we are (co-chair /committee members / support members)

What we write for EMWA Members

Dr. Cemile Jakupoglu and Sandra Götsch write about careers in veterinary medical writing in A short field guide to veterinary medical writing.
See: https://journal.emwa.org/artificial-intelligence-and-digital-health/medical-communications-and-writing-for-patients/

Dr. Karim Montasser writes about the transition from vet to writer (Vol. 28, No. 1, March 2019)
See: Medical Writing | Careers in medical writing | Veterinary Medical Writing (emwa.org)

Dr. Jennifer Freeman writes about how medical writers can learn about transparency from veterinarians (Vol. 28, N0. 2, June 2019).
See: Medical Writing | Generics and biosimilars | Veterinary Medical Writing (emwa.org)

Drs. Beatrix Döerr and Isabelle Wohllebe wrote about the growing use if real-world data in veterinary medicine, following similar developments in human medicine (Vol. 28, No. 4, December 2019)

Dr. Beatrix Döerr writes about career moves and evidence-based veterinary medicine (Vol 28. No 3, Sept 2019.
See: Medical Writing | Trends in medical writing | Veterinary Medical Writing (emwa.org)

Drs. Beatrix Döerr and Isabelle Wohllebe wrote about the growing use if real-world data in veterinary medicine, following similar developments in human medicine (Vol. 28, No. 4, December 2019)
See: Medical Writing | Artificial intelligence and Digital Health | Veterinary Medical Writing (emwa.org)

Dr. Cemile Jakupoglu writes about Bioequivalence studies in veterinary medical writing (Vol. 29, No.1, March 2020)
See: https://journal.emwa.org/visual-communications/veterinary-medical-writing/

Dr. Beatrix Döerr writes about developments in veterinary medical research, Dr. Cemile Jakupoglu wrote about developments in regulatory veterinary medicine and Henry Smith wrote about the situation with a zoonotic disease in Japan (Vol. 29, No. 2, June 2020)
See: Medical Writing | The Data Economy | Veterinary Medical Writing (emwa.org)

Dr. Karim Montasser writes about the placebo effect as experienced by pet owners and the lessons about homeopathy (Vol 30, No. 1, March 2021).
See: Medical Writing | Social media | Veterinary Medical Writing (emwa.org)