What Every Medical Writer Needs to Know: Questions and Answers for the Serious Medical Author

237 Pages·2015·9.85 MB·English

by  Robert B. Taylor (auth.)

Robert B. Taylor
What Every
Medical Writer
Needs to Know
Questions and Answers
for the Serious Medical Author
What Every Medical Writer Needs to Know

Robert B. Taylor
What Every Medical Writer
Needs to Know
Questions and Answers for the Serious
Medical Author
Robert B. Taylor, MD
Professor
Department of Family and Community Medicine
Eastern Virginia Medical School
Norfolk , VA , USA
Professor Emeritus
Department of Family Medicine
Oregon Health & Science University
School of Medicine
Portland , OR , USA
ISBN 978-3-319-20263-1 ISBN 978-3-319-20264-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-20264-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015945099
Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015
T his work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of
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does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
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Medicine and writing go well together,
they shed light on each other and both do
better by going hand in hand. A doctor
possessed of the writer’s art will be
the better consoler to anyone rolling in
agony; conversely, a writer who under-
stands the life of the body, its powers
and its pains, its fl uids and functions,
its blessings and banes, has a great
advantage over him who knows nothing
of such things.
—German writer Thomas Mann,
author of The Magic Mountain
I think all writing is a disease. You can’t
stop it.
—American physician and poet
William Carlos Williams

For Frankie, Masha, Jack, and Annie

Pref ace
A nyone can learn to dance. Each of us can grow roses. And any medical or
j ournalism professional—with years of education that included at least a few writ-
ing assignments—can be a medical writer. The hard part is to “Dance with the
Stars,” grow roses that are the envy of your neighbors, or write outstanding medical
articles, books, and technical reports.
This book is intended to increase your understanding of the art of medical writ-
ing. It is not a “how-to” book about medical writing; I already write one of those,
titled M edical Writing: A Guide for Clinicians, Educators, and Researchers, 2nd
edition [1]. This book is different in that it is a bout medical writing—about what we
do, why and how we do it, the goals we seek, the perils we face, and what we can
learn from others who have walked the trail before us.
One of the themes of this book is that we medical writers can learn a lot from past
and current authors whose works are, for some reason, recognized as both notewor-
thy in content and skillfully crafted. Yes, medical writing is “different,” partly
because our profession is considered enigmatic by the uninitiated, and perhaps
because the vocabulary we use is so different from the words most people speak
each day. At its core, medical writing is thinking through a topic, perhaps perform-
ing a research study, and, in the past, putting words on paper and today on a com-
puter screen.
T he fundamentals of writing transcend the various backgrounds of those who
aspire to author works for others to read. Medical writing is not so special that we
cannot learn from some of the “great” authors such as Robert Frost, Gertrude Stein,
and Marcel Proust, as well as familiar medical writers such as Sir William Osler,
Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, and Abraham Verghese.
Who needs this book? The answer is anyone who is serious about medical writ-
ing. It is for anyone who should know about rookie mistakes, medical authorisms,
publication bias, the Dizzy Awards, and the Gunning Fog Index, how being a medi-
cal writer is like being a surgeon, the basics of technical medical writing, the facts
about predatory publishers, and new pitfalls writers and academicians face in copy-
right infringement. The potential reader is anyone who wants to know what Doctor
W. Somerset Maugham told of the three basic rules of good writing, how Doctor
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