Name: Mariana Dalagnol (she/her)
PhD: Pharmaceutical Nanotechnology, Federal University of Santa Catarina (Brazil), 2016
What was your main area of research?
The major area of research in my PhD was Pharmaceutical Nanotechnology. I developed microstructured gastro-resistant carriers encapsulating chitosan nanoparticles for the colonic delivery of simvastatin aiming for the treatment of colorectal cancer.
What is your current job?
I am the Founder and Medical Writer at LETTERA Medical Writing in Florianópolis, Brazil.
I write mainly pharmaceutical advertising and market access materials for the pharma industry, like slide decks, onepage, detail aids, marketing emails, infographics, and video scripts. I also write advisory board summaries, and work as medical editor and proofreader and medical translator (since I am bilingual).
Since the medical writer company is mine and I work as a freelancer, I do everything by myself. From reaching out to possible clients (or answering when the clients reach out to me) to the medical writing itself, going through briefing meetings, pricing and deadline definitions, as well as all the bureaucratic processes (such as contracts and service invoices).
Without a doubt the possibility of learning something new everyday is my favorite thing about being a medical writer. And I have a special feeling when I need to write about any disease and treatment I have never heard of before. The learning curve from knowing nothing to the finished project approved by the client is a blessing. Working and studying at the same time is pure joy to me.
Another thing I enjoy is the freedom to set my own work schedule. This way, I can not only balance my personal life, but also define the times when I work best, which for me is in the morning/early afternoon. I leave the late afternoon and evening for more routine tasks, like organizing references or leaving notes to guide the design team on how I would like the material to be handled.
How did you find this position? What were the career steps you took to get to where you are now?
Actually this position found me. After I finished my PhD, nothing that I tried worked out. I spent more than a year unemployed. One day, when I was not even looking for opportunities, I found a medical writing opportunity, and I decided to send my CV. This was my first medical writing job in 2017.
In 2021, I started to work full time in another company and learned a lot about the niches that I work in today. But after almost 3 years, I decided to leave the company and work on my own because I realized that despite talking to my boss twice I did not have any more space to grow as a medical writer. That was unacceptable to me, so I decided to open my own medical writing company.
PhD graduate ➡️ Full-time Medical Writer in a agency ➡️ Founder and Medical Writer at LETTERA Medical Writing
Why did you decide to not pursue a career in academia?
Working in research here in Brazil is really hard because we do not have much financial support to do that. So during my PhD, I already knew that I did not want to work like that. It was a pretty easy decision for me.
What advice do you have for someone getting their PhD and looking to pursue a career outside of academia?
The most important thing is to study the career you want to pursue. You can not go to a medical writing interview without knowing about medical writing. One thing that can help you is that during the PhD we must write scientific publications (that is a great niche of medical writing). So you can transfer the skills you developed during that time to the possible opportunity as a medical writer. Although, it is important for me to say that people with no Master or PhD degrees are able to become medical writers as well. Medical writing has several niches, and not all of them involve applying what you learned by writing publications during the PhD (that is my case).
I usually search for the managers of the companies I am interested in and try to connect on LinkedIn. I send them a DM talking about my company, the type of materials I write, and if we can schedule a meeting. Sometimes it is the client who sends me a DM or an email and we go from there. I almost never connect with other medical writers or with people who want to become a medical writer, they reach out to me actually.
The American Medical Writers Association is a great source of information about medical writing and also to network. Another thing that is helpful is to hire a medical writing mentor if you can afford it. Also on LinkedIn, you will find a lot of people offering this kind of service. Nonetheless, if you want to do that, just make sure the mentor has many years of experience. Unfortunately, there are people offering mentoring services with almost no experience in the field.