Medical Writing: Making medical terms easier to understand

Most medical and scientific terms were invented by educated gentlemen in the nineteenth century, and this explains why they are a curious blend of Latin and Greek.  Medical men and scientists had the problem of having to invent a whole new vocabulary in order to systematize the burgeoning fields of science and medicine.  Therefore, an [...]

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Medical Writing: How to use examples to make dry material more appealing

One of the ways in which you can make dry material more appealing to your audience is to use examples.  The examples you choose should be both relevant to the topic and go beyond it to tell a story so that the material will be more firmly fixed in a person’s mind.  When I taught [...]

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Medical Writing: The Challenges of Presenting Dry Material

Most information is presented in the form of lists.  If you open a typical medical textbook, psychology textbook or anatomy textbook, what you really see are bulleted lists with the material fleshed out.  
As someone who studied psychology for 15 years, I can tell you that lists do not help people to remember things.  If [...]

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Medical Writing: Creating a Course from Scratch

I recently gave a 3-hour workshop for the American Medical Writer’s Association in Louisville, KY, so today I thought I would share some secrets and tips for how to create a new course.
The first thing I did was go to the bookstore and look for the most recent information I could find on the topic.  My [...]

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