Interested in medical journalism? The first thing you must understand is that it's a different beast altogether from your regular workaday writing chores.
Not only does it require a good deal of medical knowledge, it requires you to incorporate that familiarity with numerous other disciplines.
Medical journalism is a subset of the medical writing profession and is geared, in large part, to bridging the gap between the scientific community behind modern breakthroughs and the general public.
As a writer, your job goes beyond documenting new research and findings; it goes farther than writing something witty and structurally sound (thanks to a good grammar software, of course).
You'll have to find a way to present that complex, often-inaccessible information in way that both educates readers and entertains them.
Representing The Research Accurately.
As a professional medical writer, you're expected to accurately represent the work of scientists and other researchers involved.
Before you can even begin to do that, you need to understand the work clearly and accurately.
This is a huge responsibility that can come back to haunt you if you make assumptions about areas of the research that aren't clear at first glance.
Articulating Complex Material For The General Public.
It's one thing to be able to explain what a research is about; it's another to ensure that the average reader can understand it.
Translating this material intended for scientists into one that readers can appreciate (consequently, gaining new insight from) is a difficult skill to master - but it is one you need to get a tight grasp of.
Readable Science.
Even after you drill the material down to simpler terms, you'll still need to hold the casual reader's attention throughout the length of the piece.
This is where all the tricks you learned in writing school kicks in, fashioning your words into shapes that draw your readers deeper.