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Just a reminder. Not every tech writing job in a pharma
company is directly bio-related. I'm on my second one now,
and in both cases, the work is in the IT department dealing
with IT-related things that don't change all that much from
one industry to another.
In one case, I really was simply doing end-user manuals for
applications written to automate certain bio-related tasks,
like logging alerts on questionable samples after plasma
collection. The manual was for people in the collection
centers, not doctors or chemists. Another was abuot an
application used for dealing with scheduled maintenance for
hardware used in the manufacturing facility. In other
words, it's all internal, totally unrelated to products for
public consumption.
And I didn't need to know anything about blood chemistry or
fractionation to do any of this. Right now, I'm in a much
larger bio-med corporation, but still, one project has to
do with data warehouse and knowledge management. Another is
a handbook for departments who are looking to adopt an ASP
and need to conform to corporate policy. I've also done
PowerPoint presentations for getting a project off the
ground. In all these cases, my familiarity with software
development has been more important than whether I have
ever done medical writing or editing. I'm sure there are
other writers in the company for that, but they needed me
for this.
Because of the industry, it's true that the FDA takes a
look (or can if they want to) at everything we do, in order
to see whether a project needs formal validation. Many
don't. Policies and procedures and process documentation
you will have always with you.
=====
Maggie Secara
Note: This post may contain misspellings, grammatical errors, disorganized sentence structure, or may entirely lack a coherent theme. These elements are natural to the process of writing, and will only add to the overall beauty of the post.
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