By Crystal Tate

As someone who works in healthcare and knows a lot about it, I can say with certainty that it’s important to find a writer with experience in healthcare. In the digital age we live in now, coming up with valuable content is more important than ever — especially in the healthcare field. 

But writing in the health space is different from writing in any other field. Because the healthcare industry is so complicated and full of crucial details, writers need to know a lot about it in order to write accurate and useful content. 

Whether you’re working on a patient education campaign or developing content for a medical device company, whatever your needs, you absolutely need a writer with experience in healthcare to ensure your messaging is accurate for your brand and reader group. 

No matter what audience you’re targeting, the copy has to be clear and effective. And medical copy especially has to be written plainly enough that the layperson can understand it, trust it, and nothing of significance is lost in translation. 

Let’s talk about why it’s important to hire a writer with experience in healthcare and what to look for when doing so.

Experience Speaks for Itself

First off, the healthcare industry is highly regulated, and most content related to healthcare, depending on its use, must follow specific rules. If a writer hasn’t worked in healthcare, how can they match their experiences with these complex regulations? 

They might not understand how complicated these rules are. This could lead to content that is wildly wrong, hurts respected scholarship, damages your credibility, and negatively affects patients. 

Also, writing for the healthcare field requires a deep understanding of medical terms, how diseases work, and the different ways to treat them. 

The healthcare field is full of specialized terms and medical jargon, with an ever-growing list of abbreviations used in short-hand charting and verbal reports. That jargon can be confusing to those outside of the industry. And an experienced healthcare worker knows not to flood someone with information that may turn out to be useless and irrelevant. 

Sometimes less is more. Information has to be provided in small doses at different times to not cause stress to the information seeker. A writer who hasn’t worked in healthcare before might have trouble explaining these ideas in everyday terms, which could lead to misunderstandings between patients and healthcare providers.

Accuracy is King

The need for accuracy and attention to detail is another important reason to find a writer with experience in the healthcare field. In the  medical niche, there is not a whole lot of room for inaccurate and unclear messaging. It’d be dangerous, a waste of time, and will directly affect your company’s resources.

Even the smallest mistake in healthcare can have profound outcomes. For example, the wrong dosage instructions, untimely blood draws, or the slightest misspelling of a name could cause patients to get very sick. In a worst-case scenario, mistakes that seem insignificant can result in death. 

Especially in bedside patient care, documentation is everything. A keen eye for detail that others overlook is king. Requiring expertise and complete accuracy  is not so much gatekeeping as ensuring that your patient or client gets the absolute best care. An experienced healthcare worker understands this deeply and will approach each project with this mindset. 

And you need someone with that same attitude watching your back in your business. 

When I worked for the Red Cross, we had a saying: “If it wasn’t documented, it didn’t happen.” A writer who has worked in healthcare will know how important accuracy, open communication, and meeting timely deadlines are and will be able to write content that can be relied on. 

Experience in healthcare, along with accuracy and attention to detail, helps writers create content that speaks to the audience. A lot of the time, writing about healthcare is for patients, healthcare providers, or both. A writer who has worked in healthcare will know what these groups need and care about and will be able to write content that speaks to them. 

For example, a writer with previous healthcare experience might be able to make patient education materials that are easy to understand and don’t use medical jargon.