A medical writer for a local newspaper asked me why I thought medical writing was important to the community. I hadn’t though much about it before but her question got me going.

People can choose not to follow politics or the sideshow that’s Washington, DC – can even choose not to vote. People can ignore the state of the nation’s economics and end their involvement at the supermarket check-out stand. But health and medicine are animals of a different sort. You can’t just ignore health problems and hope they’ll go away. Given that people have to deal with medicine, and that it is undeniably the best that they do so from an informed position, and the value of medical writing begins to show.

Education, then, is the primary function of medical writing directed at the lay audience. By educating people to medical realties and subtleties, you create informed consumers. The busy marketplace of physicians, clinics, hospitals and treatment approaches is much less intimidating if the consumer is informed. The consumer who knows what those distant professionals are bandying about is a consumer who is not depersonalized by the process. This in itself is no small achievement. But there’s more.

Medical writing can do people’s research for them. Assume (too often correctly) that people are lazy and (more often correctly) that no one has time to become conversant with everything that affects their lives. Here again, medical writing serves a purpose. Investigation of new and existing technology, clinics, treatments and so on, and the clear presentation of the information is part pf the medical writer’s job. Keep it simple and brief, so that people will take that information in, and you have created a more sophisticated consumer population.

Once you begin to translate the polysyllabic Latin and explain the functions of those multi-colored organs, you begin to alleviate ignorance of medicine. You may also alleviate other negatives. Medical writing can reduce the unbased fears, misconceptions and half-truths which people might use to determine a course of action when faced with a health problem.

Optimistically, medical writing could promote communication between lay audiences and health care professionals. It is too easy for professionals to dismiss the public as unable to understand the truths they consider self-evident. If medical writing shows that simple translation promotes effective communication, then professionals may try harder. Look at medical writing as the Rosetta Stone that makes professionalisms understandable for the lay audience, and lay questions comprehensible to professionals. It is one way to help these two “cultures” understand each other.

Informing people of medical breakthroughs is an exciting function of medical writing. You can show people that there is a choice of treatments for a given problem. You can create hope by communicating new treatments for previously untreatable problems. Of course, this also promotes an informed consumer population, as well as acceptance of what might otherwise be regarded (by the public) as voodoo. Think of where we would be if everyone had to understand Salk’s and Sabin’s professional research before we dared use polio vaccines.

Finally, and perhaps most dramatically, medical writing can change people’s self-image. We all know that mind affects body, and vice versa. But not too long ago, the popular view of a human being was as an atomistic collection of component parts. A health problem was a malfunction of one part. Medicine treated the symptoms directly, without diverging from the illness at hand. Then came news of medical research into stress, meditation, psychosomatic illness (where it is not the illness which is “in the head,” but the cause) and on. Mental stress can cause physical problems. Meditation can prevent or alleviate physical problems. We all know that … now. By informing the public of changes in medical thinking, medical writing has promoted this major shift in self-image. And that’s exciting!

Today’s world almost makes medical writing a necessity. People can’t just look up the GP (general practitioner) doctor anymore. There are family practice physicians, internists, surgeons of every sort and specialists beyond belief. Where do you start? The old ear-nose-throat doctor is today an “otolaryngologist.” Medical writing can show people where to start, what to expect and why, always, there is hope when something goes wrong with the body.