Medical Technical Writer Salary
How Much Money Does A Medical Technical Writer Make?
A medical-technical writer specializes in medical writing. They write on a wide range of medicine and healthcare-related documents, including articles, marketing copy, and educational materials. A medical-technical writer’s main job is to make science and technology easily understandable to their readers. Some medical technical writers write for a highly educated and professional audience while others focus on writing for educated laymen. Medical technical writers commonly work for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. They can also find employment with hospitals and other health care providers.
As journalists, medical technical writers can write for newspapers, general interest periodicals, and trade publications. In the education field, they may work for medical and health care book publishers, medical education companies, and academic institutions. Medical technical writers come from a wide variety of educational backgrounds. It is therefore not an obligation for a medical technical writer to have a medical background. Some medical technical writers are physicians or other medical professionals who were interested in medicine and found their niche in medical writing. Others have formal education in medicine or science and have picked up a technical education doing research on the job.
Medical technical writers may work in a variety of formats including traditional print media, online publications, multimedia presentations, videos, podcasts, websites, and social media platforms. Some of the documents and texts that they may produce include ad copy for pharmaceuticals, devices, and other products, continuing medical education materials, grant proposals, policy documents, health education materials, magazine and newspaper articles, medical books, medical and scientific journal articles, regulatory documents and white papers.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in May 2018 the median annual salary for technical writers in the professional, scientific, and technical services industries was $72,900. The U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics also notes that the increasing demand for complex medical and scientific information will continue to create job opportunities for medical technical writers. Employment in the field is projected to grow 8% from 2018 to 2028, faster than the average for all occupations. The 2019 salary survey from the American Medical Writers Association found the median medical technical writer salary to be substantially higher, at $107,000 for full-time employees and $151,000 for freelance professionals.
There are several factors that affect the salary of a medical technical writer including company size where large companies generally pay better as compared to small ones, type of employer where government agencies pay the lowest and biotech companies the highest, and location with higher salaries being paid by cities with a high cost of living. Entry-level employees, on average, earn about $40,000 less per year than those with seniority and management duties.