What our degrees are actually for

For a long time I couldn't articulate what my medical degree meant on the page, at least when it comes to medical communications.

I could say what I did, overall. I could say what I learned. I could say what I do as a job: I write and translate CME content. But when I tried to say what my background gave a client that a good translator without it wouldn't, I didn't have a clean answer. Sure, clinical experience and scientific knowledge sound great, but sometimes they lose meaning in practice. Working on that content, I've met enough capable professionals who are not physicians to know the degree isn't the whole story.

It hit me when I had been working on clinical trial content for months. I was reviewing an informed consent form, and it dawned on me that I had not applied anything specific to my medical knowledge in this particular document. That's not always the case, and that's why it took me a while to notice.

That bothered me more than I expected, because if I couldn't articulate it, a client couldn't buy it. What was left was a bunch of deliverables, just documents, and I was offering what everyone else does.

So since last year I've been trying to find out, page by page, where the degree makes a difference and where it doesn't. The question I ended up asking of every page is simple: what happens if an error here is not caught, and what's the profile of the person who would catch it?

Over the years I have seen this pattern: a few pages need to be read the way a clinician reads them, because the error needs clinical judgment. On most pages, the error that matters is one a careful linguist with a controlled vocabulary catches, and there my degree adds cost and little else.

A description of a clinical procedure, or surgery, where it's easy to confuse up, down, in front, behind. A description of a clinical sign that requires having seen it in person to actually convey it effectively on paper. The realities of educating patients and their variable health literacy status. All these require an angle that only real-life experience can provide.

Turns out that this analysis resulted in fewer pages coming my way. So now, when work comes in, I sort it first and tell the client which parts need what I do, if any.

Sometimes that means turning down clients.

That scared me a little, and I won't pretend it has paid for itself yet. What it changed is the conversation: a client who hears which parts need me is deciding what to buy, not what to pay per word or per hour. What it gave me is the confidence of saying: this is the part that needs what I do, and this is the part that doesn't.

That is what I'd offer you this week. If you studied a science before you started in medical communications, take your last job and go through it, section by section. Ask the same question of each part: what happens if an error here is not caught, and who is the person who would catch it? Mark the parts where the answer is you. Those pages are what a client is buying when they buy you.

Feel free to reply and tell me about that page where what you studied or your life experience provided something a generalist couldn't have. I'm collecting these, and I'd like to write about what they have in common.