There are some rather obvious “tools” a medical writer needs: knowledge of medical concepts, good grammar, a good vocabulary, a sense of composition…. You get the idea. There are two other tools that are worth mentioning, though. The first is may seem rather obvious: You need to master a word processing program. The second may seem strange at first, but after you work as a medical writer for a while, you’ll understand why I mention this: you need to learn to use a spreadsheet program.

The most commonly used word processing program is Word. Most of the time, it’s also a pretty good program, although you do need to make sure you’ve installed it on a machine that has the proper hardware to support it. Most of my word processing experience is with Word, so I’m going to speak about its functions in particular, but whichever program you use, it’s worth looking to see if similar features are available.

For most people, Word is like a typewriter that allows you to make an infinite number of typing errors. Word actually has a large number of built in functions that can make a medical writer’s life (or at least her job) much easier. Here are a few of the features in Word that can be rather useful:

  • Customize your toolbars: Word lets you add toolbars and rearrange the buttons on them. Some buttons I find useful are the superscript and subscript ones, and the paragraph indent ones. I also like the track changes toolbar, and the button that allows you to see not-printing and formatting characters.
  • Track changes: Often, a medical writer collaborates on documents with other writers, editors, and medical experts. In these instances, it’s useful to see what changes have been made to the document, and by whom. It’s also useful if you want to be able to backtrack through your own work, selectively removing certain changes.
  • Find and Replace: Perhaps you’re laughing, but do not underestimate the power of this function. You can use it to change the capitalization and even formatting of sections of text. For example, if you wanted to find every number that has two digits after a decimal point and color that text in red, you could do so. There are limitations to this function, but what it can do is rather remarkable.
  • Keyboard shortcuts: There are always two or three ways to do something in Word. Rather than considering this a confusing hindrance, I encourage you to embrace this and learn as many ways to do things as possible. It can only make your work more efficient. Keyboard shortcuts are great things to learn. Word has a number of built in shortcuts, but you can also create your own. I’ve found it useful to do so for several tasks. Just remember that the shortcuts you add may not be on all the machines you use.
  • Formatting and Styles, Templates: Depending on the kinds of projects you do, you may find that you have certain formats that you use over and over again. It’s worth learning to use the Formatting and Styles feature and to create templates, or at least to feel comfortable doing this with a reference guide handy.
  • General formatting of documents: This isn’t a single feature, but rather a general principle. You should be able to use page breaks in place of carriage returns to adjust spacing, or better yet, know how to adjust paragraph attributes so that the lines stick together, stay with the next paragraph, etc. It’s also useful to know how to format different sections of a single document in different ways, such as having a section that’s in landscape between two sections in portrait view, or to have the pages in each section numbered differently.

Finally, keep in mind that Excel can be extremely useful. Medical writers spend a remarkable amount of time creating, formatting, and filling in tables. Excel can do a remarkable amount of this very quickly. One useful feature is the ability to customize number formats. Pivot tables and graphs can also be useful, although I’m not as familiar with them as I’d like to be.

There are a number of ways to learn these things. The first is simply to play with the program. Even if you choose to learn more formally, I recommend doing this from time to time. You should never be scared of your tools. If you prefer more formal tutorials, there are a number of tips and tricks books available. Finally, should you seek quick and free answers, Microsoft does provide some tutorials online.

Even if you are not a medical writer, I hope you’ll explore what your word processing program has to offer. You may find yourself pleasantly surprised, and the ability to manipulate words in more than just the traditional sense is quite valuable.