Why There Will Never Be a Glut of Nurse-Writers
Recently, a Facebook commenter asked me: If everybody hops on the RN2writer bandwagon, won’t this just result in a glut of nurse-writers, with work for nobody?
The answer? No, absolutely not.
And the reason why not can be summed up in a single word: Volume.
Take a moment right now to appreciate the vast volume of healthcare content required by the industry on any given day. Literally, every health-related entity in the United States produces thousands of words each day. Let’s think about this…
- How many health articles does the Cleveland Clinic publish daily? Think not only about their website but their social accounts. Do they publish 10 items a day? 50? Someone has to write each and every one of those items. Now ask yourself: How many other health systems are there in the U.S. that also are producing a similar volume of content? Do the math.
- How many diabetes supply manufacturers are there? Each of them must produce patient information to accompany each type of supply they provide. Most of the time, in fact, each product requires multiple types of patient information, from a regulatory leaflet to web pages to social media posts – and on and on.
- How many companies produce and license health condition “encyclopedias” for health systems to publish on their websites as a service to patients? Who writes each of those encyclopedia entries on rheumatoid arthritis and gout and degenerative disk disease? How many thousands of those entries per year must be generated, reviewed, and revised on a routine basis?
- How many tech companies serve the healthcare industry? Hundreds? And each of those companies needs writers to produce the dozens of blog posts, newsletters, brochures, sales emails, etc., that they distribute to clients and prospective clients every day. That’s potentially millions of words produced every year.
- What about magazines? Even publications without a specific health angle welcome health articles – especially those written by a clinician. How many health articles get published to digital publications every day? If you type “health article” into Google, the search engine returns 4 billion Billion. Like, with a “B.” And most of these results list individual publications, not articles. Did I mention billion?
- What about continuing education for clinicians? Surely you don’t believe those modules all miraculously spring to life of their own accord. No, someone writes every single one of those – and gets paid to do it.
- Don’t forget about healthcare marketing agencies. In today’s climate, every provider and payer organization needs to compete for business, and those agencies produce thousands upon thousands of content assets for clients every year, ranging from webinar decks to white papers to consumer health mini-sites to private patient communities.
These are just a few examples, off the top of my head, to illustrate the sheer volume of health content produced globally every day – most of it written by some individual person like me, a freelance writer, typing at a keyboard in their home office.
We’re currently living in an information universe, and, like the physical universe, it will only continue to expand. The information universe demands the constant production of new content, every minute, every day.
The information era is not suddenly going to end tomorrow. There’s always going to be plenty of opportunity for those who want to enter into this world.
That, my friends, is why there will never be a glut of nurse-writers. There’s currently more work available than you can possibly imagine, and there’s only going to be more work as the years roll on.