History of the American Medical Writer’s Association Part 5

NOTE:  This is Part 5 of a 5-part piece. Click here for Part 1.  Click here for Part 2.  Click here for Part 3.  Click here for Part 4. 

Today I’m going to muse about what could happen to suddenly cause medical writing to dry up.  No one likes to think about negative things like business drying up. But on the other hand, people who work for themselves know that the worst possible thing that can happen is for the business to be made irrelevant by a trend that the CEO failed to notice.  So today, we are going to explore two possible trends that could cause medical writing to dry up. 

The first trend is the decrease in the number of senior citizens.  When the current population of baby boomers passes on, there will not be a need for the huge number of medications related to chronic illness such as diabetes, heart disease and stroke.  This relative lack of need for medication could translate into a dearth of work for all the support services needed to inform the public, including medical writing. At the moment however, we are seeing an upswing in the number of people over the age of 50, so this trend is one that is not going to affect us for some time.  People who are now approaching retirement age could be around for the next 30 or 40 years, making it a good time to get into a medical writing career.  But at some point in the future, the pendulum will swing back again, and then times could be lean.  

Another possible scenario – as mentioned last week – is that medical writers may go out of existence due to the fact that young people read less and less.  Therefore, information may have to be packaged in a different way, perhaps by using computer games, or at any rate something more visual and interactive.  The trouble is that the skill set needed to create information that is visual and interactive is very different form the skill set needed to write.  If this transformation really took hold, medical writers could be out of a job. 

Of the two trends, the second one seems more serious to me.  What can we do to get our kids to read more?

         Asklepios image: wikipedia

         Quill pen image: wikipedia

         –Cynthia Haggard is a medical writer and editor and lives in Washington DC.  She recently opened her own business, Clarifying Concepts, which provides grant writing, speechwriting, technical writing, writing for the public and regulatory affairs services.  To see more, please go to clarifyingconcepts. (c) 2008 All rights reserved.