Gladwell on Medical Writing

In Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers he writes extensively on the idea of mastery and expertise; he distills this down to his 10,000 hours theory, postulating that for any person to truly master a skill, it requires 10,000 hours of practice. Applied to medical writing, this would imply that a master medical writer working within clinical development would need to have written about 50 to 60 documents to master the process of producing the highest quality documents with supreme efficiency. Looked at another way, a writer working full-time (40 hours per week) would cross over the mastery threshold at about 5 years.

We at Acumen strive to differentiate ourselves on quality and expertise. As such, our lead writers typically have over 10 years of experience; in some cases over 20. The next time you engage a writing CRO ask yourself if their writers have 10,000 hours under their belt. You wouldn't hire a first-time surgeon to perform a thoracic aortic dissection repair; don't hire a neophyte writer for your next pivotal clinical study report.    

Justin McLaughlin

CEO, Acumen Medical Communications