One of my favourite medical writing projects to work on is an advisory board meeting. I used to cover several of these a year as an agency-based writer, and I travelled to locations as far-flung as Miami, Belarus and Dubai.

Advisory boards are organized by pharmaceutical companies to seek expert insight into a topic of interest. It may be to find out more about how a certain condition is treated in different parts of the world, or to seek advice on designing an important clinical trial.

A medical writer’s role varies from meeting to meeting. Duties leading up to the meeting may include writing, editing or formatting slide presentations, writing invitations and other pre-meeting communications like questionnaires.

On site, which is usually a hotel or company offices, we help prepare for the meeting, assembling all presentations and other materials. There’s a slide rehearsal for the speakers, and the medical writer may need to make some changes to the slide ahead of the meeting, sometimes staying up late the night before the main event. During the meeting, we take notes for the report write-up. [Note that, in today’s virtual world, I imagine all this would happen over video conferencing].

The discussions can be challenging to follow, but I always enjoy listening to a group of experts in their particular field. I researched cell signalling pathways as a student and postdoc, so I especially enjoy discussions about drug mode of action, and how intracellular protein pathways can affect patients’ lives.

My top 3 tips for writing scientific meeting reports:

1. Before the meeting begins, ask your client what type of report they want you to write. Some will want to capture detailed discussions, others a short summary. As a writer, you need to know what you’re aiming for before you start taking your notes.
2. Unless otherwise directed by your client, don’t write the report as it happened in real time. Discussions may circle around before making their final point. A report that reads ‘Dr Smith said this and then Dr Jones said that’ is long and boring to read. A kinder approach for your reader may be to summarise: ‘The group debated the benefits of maintenance therapy, before reaching the overall conclusion that xxx’.
3. Prepare a skeleton report before the meeting, including attendees and main headings. I always type my notes rather than scribble them in a notebook. I then reorganise them and tidy up directly after the meeting, so that the report is half-written by the next morning.