Gaurav Rayamajhi l Medical writer l Medical/Pharma Copywriter l Emcee l Presenter

One of my senior colleague persuaded me to collaborate on three scientific manuscripts. I happily did join thinking writing is something I have always loved. Fortunately all of those research articles got published in reputed national and international journals. Research manuscript writing demands rigorous discipline. But, I realised scientific writing is not my cup of tea. Do I regret it? Not at all. Rather, it has given me a deeper reason to respect all those researchers because of the immense efforts they put for community welfare through their research. Though I knew, I am not made for scientific writings, there are other eye opening lessons I have garnered along, that has helped me a lot in my medical writing space. ·        Extensive literature search : Use of boolean operators and truncations ·        Authentic   medical guidelines resources : WHO, CDC, NIH ·        Literature review platforms: Cochrane ·        Idea of appropriate citations and its different typ

  But if you find it useful, Cheers! Grammar is a skill that takes years of dedication. As a medical writer or as a writer in general, grammar is a crucial asset you need to master. Though assistive apps like Grammarly have been super helpful, still free version cannot mop all the flaws. American Medical Writers Association recently published a blog on grammars which I found super helpful which I will be posting hereby, especially those points I am likely to slip at. I will try to go through the post at least once daily for couples of days in a row. If you find it helpful, share and save. ·          Each and every always require a singular verb. Each student is required to attend the banquet, and every spouse is also here.   ·          With the correlative conjunctions either … or and neither … nor, the subject nearer the verb determines the number of the verb.   Neither the resident nor the interns are here. Neither the interns nor the resident is here.   ·   

Last week was about traveling. Expected 7 hours became 10 because of ongoing road construction. Too tedious and sultry. On top of that, my four-year-old nephew started getting cranky. He usually can't tolerate long commutes because of motion sickness. As time progressed, he started panicking and crying, “Get me out of the van.” That certainly got me thinking, would it have been better if I had medicated him before travel? The most commonly preferred medicines for motion sickness are sedating antihistamines (preferably promethazine). These sedating antihistamines control throw up not only by inducing sleep but also because of their anticholinergic action that prevents vomiting. But would I consider it? My protective instinct turns me reluctant because over-sedation can be threatening. And, anticholinergics like scopolamine are not recommended in children because of insufficient safety studies. Meanwhile, prokinetic agents like domperidone have no good effect on motion sickness as vo

  Facts and theories are boring.   Stories are interesting.   It is a human psychology that has been set this way that our attention gets grabbed by stories. That is why; I believe as a writer or as a speaker, storytelling is an important attribute that we need to master. Psychology states, our mind might get dull with numeric figures, hypothesis and theories. However, it can get interesting if we have an ability to weave those information with compelling storytelling technique. Over the years concepts like data storytelling has evolved and it leaves me at wonder how science merges with story narration. I came across a post by Sarah Nelson where she breaks down how storytelling can be implemented in medical writing. Here it goes:   Once upon a time there was... A terrible medical condition. It affected x million people around the globe and was the Xth leading cause of death. Every day... Patients with this disease suffer with poor quality of life and increased ris

  It is so well said, you are what you eat. Even fitness experts highlight this often; it is only 20% of physical exercise that determines your body’s condition. Rest 20% is food. As healthcare professionals, especially as a pharmacist, diet is something we talk about so rarely being always busy studying and preaching drugs. Aging is an inflammatory process and most of the state of being diseased is also an inflammatory condition. With inappropriate inflammatory drugs we are always loading our bodies with even more inflammation and that is when a bucket of drugs is needed to be poured to calm those inflammations. That is why, I believe, nutritionists should be given a position in clinical settings to reach an optimum patient therapeutic outcome. With the evolvement of well-researched concepts of therapeutic diet, disease-modifying diet, or inflammatory diet, nutritionists can contribute a lot not just from patients’ safety perspective but also to educate other healthcare profes

Writing is certainly not an easy piece of cake. It is not just about commanding tenses, subject-verb agreement, vocabs, and other technicalities revolving around writing. Rather about being aware of little minutiae, one of the most intriguing being punctuation. Punctuations are like pauses in speech and flavors in food. Punctuations soften the ambiguous sentence to a comprehensible form. Punctuations can make a statement exciting, curious, interactive, and suspenseful, and elicit so many other emotions. However, poor command of punctuation can indicate totally a different meaning from what you are trying to express. Punctuation is a power to a sentence. However, overusing it or misusing it can kill the entire essence. One comma can either make or break a sentence. Here are two statements: 1.        Let’s eat Andrew. 2.        Let’s eat, Andrew. See, just a comma can cost people’s life. Excelling at punctuation is a lifelong process. We somehow get a miss no matter

A friend of mine, who is also a pharmacist rang me a call yesterday after he received an unusual prescription. A breastfeeding mother was advised metoclopramide after she complained of lactation insufficiency. Well, to be honest, I had never heard of it. And I did my research. Metoclopramide, commonly used as a prokinetic agent either for anti-emesis or gastric emptying also increases serum prolactin. There have been several studies supporting the evidence of increased milk production along with domperidone which also belongs to the same class as metoclopramide. However, exact efficacy and safety have not been yet established. Upon comparison, domperidone is excreted in breast milk in a minute amount insignificant to cause any harm to a baby while metoclopramide is found in the plasma serum of breastfed infants but no adverse effects are yet reported. Nevertheless, there should be attentive monitoring as metoclopramide can cross the blood-brain barrier. From the mother’s sa