Start your health copywriting career and achieve industry success
Principles of Health & Medical Copywriting will teach you how to:
- Supplement your income with freelance health copywriting work
- Shift careers to enable more lifestyle freedom
- Share your medical knowledge and experience
- Develop professional copywriting skills
- Achieve industry standards and best practices
- Write stronger health content for your website and blog.
Trusted
More than 1000 students in 40 countries have taken our courses.
Flexible
Learn at your own pace, from anywhere in the world, with unlimited access.
Accredited
We’re independently accredited for quality, academic standards and professional development.
Comprehensive
16 lectures will walk you through the entire process of health & medical copywriting.
Who is this course for?
Principles of Health & Medical Copywriting is perfect for:
- Health professionals who have been in clinical practice for a while and are looking for a career change
- New health writers who want to write better health content for their blogs and websites
- Professionals who are keen to polish their writing skills and learn more about industry standards
- Bloggers who want to start a blog or website and help people live healthier lives
- Scientists and academics looking into medical copywriting as a new career opportunity
- Retired physicians who love to communicate about health and are exploring the idea of healthcare writing
- Aspiring copywriters who are ready to give it a go and go pro!
A community of opportunity
"I came to this course curious and hopeful. As I worked through the material, I felt stretched and challenged, but always buoyant. That's because Michelle is such a great teacher, mentor and encourager. It's not just a course, but a community of opportunity - and a great one to be part of."
Sally Bathgate, Australia
What will you learn?
Principles of Health & Medical Copywriting is your ultimate guide to health & medical copywriting essentials, covering:
- A comprehensive overview of the medical copywriting field
- How to build a career in the industry
- The many companies and clients who hire medical copywriters
- The sheer variety of medical copywriting projects
- How much money you can make as a medical copywriter
- Pricing strategies that help you win copywriting jobs
- What clients and employers are looking for in a professional copywriter
- Essential skills, attributes, experience and qualifications
- How to ensure your work is compliant and doesn’t mislead your readers
- Evidence-based persuasive writing techniques
- How to get from a blank page to a completed brief
- Strategies for building trust and writing engaging copy
- How to get comfortable and confident using the power of persuasion
- How to write trustworthy content that inspires action
- How to make even ‘serious’ medical copy sound engaging and inspiring
- How to cite medical research and reference your work correctly
- Legal, regulatory and ethical considerations all copywriters need to know
- Copywriting format, design and layout best practices
Outstanding
"The Principles of Health & Medical Copywriting course pushed me out of my comfort zone as an academic writer and opened me up to a whole new world of medical writing. This course covers so much more than just how to write great copy. It delves into the mindset of writing copy, the psychology behind copywriting, legal considerations, how to stand out among your peers, and how to get and retain clients. Michelle is a great teacher, with clear and logical lessons packed with information and delivered in a variety of ways. The templates, extra resources, and fantastic networking opportunities were unexpected bonuses that made this class outstanding."
Jan Dutton, New Zealand
What's included?
Here's what you get.
- 3+ hours of podcast lectures discussing the lesson curriculum in detail
- Weekly video calls (new for 2021!) where we’ll get together and you can pick my brain
- Podcast notes covering the lesson topics
- Weekly copywriting exercises to help you put the learnings into practice
- Dozens of handouts full of best-practice resources
- Templates and guidelines to help you plan your content
- Personalised feedback on every writing task you submit
- Student-only Facebook group of 850+ so you can meet other students
- CPD certificate to put towards self-study or CPD
- Alumni webinar library access including 10+ hours of bonus learning
- Loyalty discounts giving you 30% off every other course
- World-class eLearning platform for a seamless learning experience.
Course outline
Your curriculum guide.
Lesson 1: An introduction to health & medical copywriting
We begin with a comprehensive overview of the health & medical copywriting industry.
- Discover the many forms of health & medical copywriting – learn about ads, sales copy, email marketing, blogging, website copywriting, product information, patient education, SEO and more
- Explore the vast employment opportunities – see who you can work for as both a freelance and employed copywriter, and gain an understanding of how much money you can expect to make
- Discover what clients and employers are looking for in a copywriter for hire – be taught about essential skills, experience, qualifications, attributes, CVs and your portfolio
- Find out how to transition to the health & medical copywriting field – I’ll give you my top strategies to help you plan your entry into the industry
Lesson 2: Mindset, research, voice and drafting
You’ve got a brief. Now what? Believe it or not, background work is just as – if not MORE – important than the words you put on the page. That’s why our second lesson focuses on the essential preparation needed to write compelling health & medical copy.
- Develop a copywriting mindset – learn what this mindset entails and why you need it before you start writing
- Find out how to research your customer needs – get strategies to ensure your copywriting is highly targeted and extremely effective
- Understand your project’s key requirements – discover the crucial questions to ask before you start working so you will save you time and enhance the quality of your work
- Learn how to start writing when presented with a blank page – get templates to help if you’re struggling to get started
Fascinating and applicable to the real world
"I've completed two courses and I loved both of them. Michelle is encouraging, supportive and knowledgeable. The courses are fascinating and applicable to the real world. I thoroughly recommend them to anyone interested in learning the craft and business of health writing."
Lesson 3: Persuasion, trust, engagement and action
In copywriting, persuasion is the name of the game. In this lesson, you’ll learn how to weave persuasive writing techniques into your health & medical copywriting.
- Get comfortable and confident with persuasion – learn about compelling offers, power words, persuasion psychology and more
- Discover how to build trust with your readers – be taught what does (and doesn’t) establish consumer trust and loyalty
- Grasp the essential best practices for writing engaging health & medical copy – get strategies to help you generate leads, clicks and sales, even when you’re writing serious medical copy
- Action, action, action – learn about calls to action and strategies for creating clear, actionable copy
Lesson 4: Essential information for health & medical copywriters
The fourth and final lesson of your copywriting course covers the key, industry-specific topics that all professional health & medical copywriters need to know.
- Explore legal and regulatory laws – I’ll show you how to ensure your copywriting is compliant and not misleading
- Discover how to write high-quality health & medical copy – learn about ethical considerations, social responsibility, meaningful messages, citing medical research and referencing your work correctly
- Get strategies to make your copywriting look beautiful – get essential layout, formatting and readability tips
- Learn tips and tricks to make your copywriting even more powerful – discover the secret copywriting tactics used by the most successful copywriters
- OPTION TO PITCH YOUR ARTICLE: For this week’s homework, you can write and pitch an article or blog to a relevant website or magazine
Extras: COVID-19 and healthcare communication (new)
With the pandemic showing no signs of slowing down, there's never been a more significant time to learn about effective health communication. Communicating about COVID-19 is a topic that ALL health writers need to know about, as it will be a feature of health communication for years to come. To help you learn more about COVID-19 and responsible health communication, I've developed a dedicated resources page, updated regularly, which is included in your course.
Bonuses!
FREE access to the Health Writer Hub Alumni Webinar Library
- 14 webinars with new webinars released every few months
- Watch on-demand with lifetime access
- 10+ hours of online learning included for free
- Learn about freelance writing, finding work and writing tips – webinar topics include quoting for jobs, finding clients, CV writing, finding employed work, website essentials, subcontracting, marketing, and more!
Join a supportive group of like-minded copywriters
When you join Principles of Health & Medical Copywriting, you become a member of the Health Writer Hub Alumni – a smart, diverse and friendly community of 880+ health writers from around the world. Alumni benefits include:
- Loyalty discounts – 30% off any other Health Writer Hub course
- Weekly challenges – goals to keep you motivated and accountable
- Student interviews – learn the ropes from experienced students
- Extra group calls – monthly group chats with other Alumni
- Global networking – connect with health writers from around the world
- A supportive network of health writers – ask questions, and share advice
- Immediate access – join the group as soon as you sign up.
Michelle is more of a friendly guide than an instructor
"I took this course to improve my less academic voice and it delivered that and then some. The insights and tips given provide a road map that can really take you where you want to go in the field. From teaching you how to find your niche (a hard one for many), to showing you how to get clients, this course is a must-do for all aspiring health and medical copywriters (and even those already working who just want to brush up on some skills). Another GREAT aspect of the course was the feedback that Michelle provided. This was a Godsend for me as I had never had professional feedback on my writing and getting that from Michelle really helped to boost my confidence. Michelle is more of a friendly guide than an instructor. She is ALWAYS available and will answer all your questions."
Natricha Levy McFarlane, Canada
How does it work?
Here's what you can expect.
Principles of Health & Medical Copywriting runs for four weeks, and every week we focus on a new lesson. You’ll complete the lesson in your own time during the week, and each lesson requires a time commitment of around 4-8 hours.
Every lesson includes writing tasks and homework that your teacher will assess.
Your teacher
Who I am, and why I want to help you succeed.
Hi – I’m Michelle Guillemard, creator of Health Writer Hub (you can read more about me here).
When I launched Health Writer Hub in 2014, my aim was to create a best-practice resource to empower health writers to develop their skills, grow their careers and improve the quality of health content on the web.
Health & medical copywriting is about inspiring action. As a copywriter, your job is to encourage the intended response with credible, compliant and responsible content. Ultimately, conversion is the skill – and power – of effective copywriting. But, conversion isn’t just about sales – it’s about education, inspiration, empowerment and behaviour change.
As a health writer, you’re a public health advocate. Your words have the power to inspire positive action in your readers. Your content can help people improve their health literacy skills – so they can make informed choices about their health.
If you want to be an authentic, responsible and creative health copywriter, then Principles of Health & Medical Copywriting is the course for you.
My teaching method
I teach this course, and all my courses, through a combination of audio lectures (podcast style) and text resources. I also offer a range of video content, including bonus webinars and regular student interviews.
After experimenting with different combinations over the years and listening to student feedback, I am confident that delivering lectures in both audio AND text format is the most effective way for you to learn health writing in an online class environment.
While it’s up to you how you consume the content, you are welcome to:
- listen and read the transcripts at the same time
- listen and take your own notes
- listen away from your computer
- read the transcripts only.
Many of you have told me that you like to listen to the lectures while driving, walking, hiking, running or cleaning the house – and, that’s fine as well!
What are the opportunities after completion?
After you complete Principles of Health & Medical Copywriting, you will have:
- Enhanced writing skills that clients and employers are looking for
- Persuasive writing abilities to write stronger health content
- Quality writing samples to show prospective clients and employers
- Industry knowledge to help you find freelance and employed work.
I am grateful I completed it!
"Lesson 1 was a great way to strengthen my understanding of this career path. What is a medical writer? What is a copywriter? How do I plan goals? What questions should I ask myself at this point? Lesson 2 was a gamechanger. Knowing how to set up key requirements for a project definitely helps me strategize best practices with clients. I also give more thought to my “avatar” – the person who I am actually writing for with each piece. What does the person look like? What are the pain points? What problem needs to be solved? The client brief from Lesson 2.3 is so very helpful. Lesson 3 was the meat of this whole course. This is where we really dug into writing a piece and making it work. This section is well organized and focused on each element of the craft: persuasion, trust, engagement, and action. I will probably take this section again just to make sure I remember the key points. Lesson 4 was the most helpful for my actual business knowledge. You don’t know what you don’t know, right? To complete all of these sessions, it took a lot of late-night hours of reading and processing the materials. I am grateful I completed it!"
Tenille L. Lawson, USA
Certified and accredited
Accredited for quality and standards.
Principles of Health & Medical Copywriting is an approved Continuing Professional Development (CPD) course, independently accredited with the CPD Certification Service – one of the world’s leading independent CPD accreditation institutions.
As a CPD-accredited course, Principles of Health & Medical Copywriting meets the required standard of CPD at a global level. The course’s learning value and structure conform to global CPD guidelines and principles, complementing the CPD policies of professional institutes and academic bodies.
Michelle gave very attentive, spot-on feedback on my writing
"The course has a very personal feel—it’s not just great information and helpful resources—because it’s provided in such a delightfully cordial way. In addition to instruction on copywriting skills, there is a lot of attention paid to the process of finding a comfortable place for oneself in the vast and complex landscape of medical writing. I particularly enjoyed the copywriting exercises, where I got to try some new types of writing tasks. Best of all, Michelle gave very attentive, spot-on feedback on my writing."
Jessica Solodar, USA
Student stories
Feedback and student success.
Anne Watkins is a UK-based freelance writer with more than 25 years of experience working in the fields of healthcare, stress management and neuro-linguistic programming communication skills. She's worked as a practising midwife, a critical care nurse, a nurse teacher and clinical educationalist. She currently continues to lecture in communication skills and medical hypnosis at a leading UK university and offer training for multidisciplinary medical teams in NLP communication skills.
Anne says: “For years copywriting seemed like a dark art to me but thanks to Michelle’s course I discovered that the niche of technical copywriting fits my skill set perfectly. I now have much more confidence in applying for jobs and in calling myself a medical copywriter. I still refer back to the course materials from time to time, and each time I find myself learning something new. The links to additional learning at the end of each section are also very helpful and a fabulous way of reinforcing the key messages of each unit. This is a course that is going to stay bookmarked in my favourites folder for a long time to come."
Karen Farrar is a cardiac physiologist and sonographer turned writer from Melbourne who believes her background in healthcare turned out to be an ideal training ground for writing, editing, communications and strategy.
Karen says: "Coming from a health professional background, I was used to writing in a more academic and report-based style for other professionals. The Principles of Health & Medical Copywriting course helped me develop a writing style for a broader audience, and taught me how content can be written to create trust and encourage action. I have used these principles to write a range of content for health professionals including web copy, professional profiles and social media posts. I now also apply them to copywriting in other sectors. This course also has important information for writers from non-health backgrounds, particularly on legal and regulatory issues of writing about health products and practitioners."
Jackie Rogers is a freelance content writer and blogger based in Denver, Colorado. She took Principles of Health & Medical Copywriting because she, like most students, wanted best-practice resources to help her learn how to be a persuasive health copywriter.
Jackie says: "My goal in life is to create resources which encourage people to live their healthiest lives and be the best version of themselves. I want to help healthcare providers who want to help others by showcasing their expertise and helping them build trust with their audience. I took this class almost a year ago, and I still have all of the resources saved! The information about creating avatars was extremely helpful in my case to narrow down what I was trying to convey. This is a great class for someone who wants to break into the field! Completing this course gave me the confidence I needed to go further with my career."
Nancy Linford, PhD, is an experienced biomedical writer and editor with an MS degree in Biology and a PhD in Pharmacology. An American living in Reykjavík, Iceland, Nancy believes that great science and great medicine need great communication.
Nancy says, "This course gave me the confidence and skills that were necessary to expand my freelance medical writing business into health copywriting. I especially appreciated Michelle’s detailed advice on how to create intriguing copy while maintaining the highest standards of professional integrity."
Writing task feedback
Personal coaching to improve your writing skills.
The course includes personalised feedback on your writing tasks. You’ll receive a detailed critique of each task with action points and tips for improvement. This feedback is just between us and is extremely beneficial if you’re looking for personalised, practical tips to help you improve your writing skills.
Gave me the courage to move forward
"The Principles of Health and Medical Copywriting course provided a wealth of information regarding the career options available, how to get started and build a portfolio, how to research a product or service and its consumers, how to write effective copy, different types of copywriting, and more. Homework exercises help put the learnings into practice for skill-building, and many resources are provided to help continue learning. Michelle is a friendly, approachable teacher and facilitator, always willing to offer feedback and suggestions. This course has given me the courage to move forward with transitioning to a health and medical writing career."
Dawn Araujo, USA
Frequently asked questions
What you need to know.
Student feedback
What past students have said about Principles of Health & Medical Copywriting.
Michelle teaches you all the important stuff you'll need to know!
"If you're copywriting in the health niche, you really need education from a health copywriter to make sure you have all the health industry specific bases covered. Michelle teaches you all the important stuff you'll need to know!"
Gaz Ffitch, UK
Wonderful teacher, super affordable
"I'm taking Principles of Health & Medical Copywriting by Michelle Guillemard. She's a wonderful teacher and the class was super affordable. It's self-paced, but the lessons are designed to keep you moving forward over the 4 weeks. As a true beginner in the writing field, I think it's fantastic. She's available by email any time you have a question or need help with the homework. There's an associated Facebook group where students can post cool articles or pose questions to other students. Michelle is really active on the group too."
Jessica Eastridge, USA
Highly recommended
"Principles of Health & Medical Copywriting gave me the fundamentals and courage to start my freelance health and medical copywriting career. Loads of useful targeted information including references, articles, and notes were provided. In addition, detailed homework pieces to get you thinking hard on your "how to" strategy. Loved it and would highly recommend."
Amany Wahba
This is a phenomenal course!
"Principles of Health & Medical Copywriting is a phenomenal course! The lectures, recommended readings and assignments really help you to improve your copywriting skills. You can apply what you are learning in the modules immediately, even if you are not currently a career writer. Michelle is a great instructor and provides valuable feedback on your assignments. I cannot wait to take another course with her!”
Amanda Van Frank, USA
So much support
" The course provided a great overview of medical copywriting. I found particularly useful all the information on legal and regulatory considerations as well as the client brief templates. Michelle also provided us with so much support - she was always available to answer any questions and her feedback was invaluable."
Yana Daneva, Switzerland
From the first lesson, I was blown away
” At first I was skeptical, as there are a lot of courses out there, and who knows if they are worth the time. And, I must confess, Principles of Health & Medical Copywriting is one course I can recommend. Michelle broke down different aspects of health and medical writing. From the first lesson, I was blown away. She simplified health writing with her elaborate research. This course redefined my perception about the health and medical niche. It gave a quantum leap to my recent projects. The four-week journey was worth the time."
Joy Okafor, Nigeria
I do have marketable skills outside of patient care
" After taking Principles of Health & Medical Copywriting it has become clear to me that I do have marketable skills outside of patient care, but can still remain in healthcare. I enjoyed the challenge of the writing tasks and have determined where my "sweet spot" is as well as what I need to work on such as everything from word processing skills to being more comfortable with scholarly type pieces and accurate references to medical journals and other published pieces."
Shirley Beal, USA
The course increased my confidence
" I'm just beginning to explore health copywriting. Principles of Health & Medical Copywriting helped me get a real life view of it, consider the legal aspects of health copywriting I hadn't thought of and get feedback on my writing skills which helps increase my confidence in my ability to do this.”
Catherine Smith, USA