Alternative Careers in Science and Medicine

There's an old PowerPoint presentation by Carl Clay, PhD titled, "Alternative Careers in Science and Medicine." You can easily find it out there on the Internet by performing a search on Google or by clicking on the links below. The data appears to be from 2004 (salary data from HotJobs.com and Abbott-Langer.com), but the slides contain some very useful information for any physician or scientists interested in scientific/medical writing.

He starts with a section called, "Careers in Science and Medical Writing."  Then, he provides some details about his company, and then moves to "What Employers Look For" and "What Employees Look For." Then, he tackles the topic of salary (What Kind of Salary can I Expect?) and ends with a section titled, "Writing and Job Search Resources." It's a nice presentation, even though the day is from 2004.


There are two sources where you can find his PowerPoint presentation:

University of Pennsylvania:
www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/gradstud/CarlClay.ppt

East Carolina University:
www.ecu.edu/cs-dhs/ascc/customcf/CareerDev/AltMedCareer.ppt

According to Carl's LinkedIn profile, he's now working at AstraZeneca and he left Complete Healthcare Communications in 2008. The PowerPoint presentation indicates that Carl was a senior medical writer at Complete Healthcare Communications.

It looks like Carl also has a blog titled, "MedicalWriterCoach.com," so I'd encourage you to take a look at his site if you're interested in the medical communications/medical writing industry. You can also view the results of the American Medical Writers Association (AMWA) 2007 salary survey on his site.