6 Questions Regarding Medical Writing as a Profession

A follow-up to some earlier posts regarding medical writing as a profession. I have six questions I am pondering about the notion that medical writing is a profession. I welcome your thoughts on these questions.

1. Why should medical writers attend to professionalization issues? Why not?
2. Why is professional status necessary or desirable? Why not?
3. If you want to use the term professional, then who should set the standards and minimum qualifications for use of the term "professional"? How should the standards be established? Does an AMWA or EMWA certification make you a professional?
4. What can be learned from other professions that have achieved a professional identity?
5. Some observers will suggest that seeking professional status is merely a form of elitism where desire is to control knowledge and restrict access?
6. What theories/practices inform medical writers as authorities and thus warrant professional status?

Originally published on our Knowledge Management blog