Over on the west coast of the USA, Christin Chong, Lead Medical Writer and Kelly Burns, Editorial Business Manager at Fishawack’s offices in San Francisco are enjoying a well-earned break!

We celebrated #MedComms Day with baby-sized super burritos from the Mission District’s infamous El Farolito! Really hits the spot after a day of pubs and med affairs work!

The #MedComms working day is drawing to a close on the Eastern side of the USA. This is from Jim Slade, Executive Director, Editorial Services at The Fishawack Group’s offices in Philadelphia.

I hope we’re not too late to get in an entry from Fishawack’s Editorial Services team: two dozen medical editors, editorial review specialists, and editorial assistants/associates across our group companies. We’ve put together a series of haiku that touch on the expected and unexpected journeys our team experiences on a weekly basis. Some members of our US team and two UK colleagues took time out of a busy day to stand for this quick photo. Take care!

Oh, Oxford comma
Without you, confusion can reign
The editor’s friend

Red pencil is key
But that’s not the sum of me
Seeking solutions

Review Specialist
Your manuscript stays on track
Fully compliant

Posters are released
Client hit-list is in hand,
Summaries commence!

Borrow, never steal
Permission is required
If you’ve got to ask

Writer sends request
Can you do a data check?
Here’s the CSR

Truncated deadlines
We rise to the occasion
For our submissions

Deadlines are today
Zinc running very slowly
Colleagues always help

Digital content
Innovative as it is
Doesn’t write itself

Clients love our team
Annotated content sent
And they reap rewards

Happy MedComms Day
Science nerds and grammar geeks
We have found our home!

Regina Mushrock, Account Manager – inScience Communications, Philadelphia describes her typical #MedComms working day.

A typical day-in-the-life starts with cruelly being awoken around 5:00am to the screaming alarm of my mobile vibrating nearby and promptly smacking snooze until the sirens begin again precisely 9 minutes later. This sometimes goes on twice!

Hopping into the car around 6:00am after my morning preparations, I head to the train station. There’s a train scheduled a 6:44am, but I’ve only ever made that once and only by chance.! I usually end up on the 6:59am train.  The one hour trip always involves earbuds in, Amazon music on, and the playlist on shuffle. Thank you, Bose, for always being there for me when I need you most.

Occasionally, I’ll run into my colleague at Jefferson Station and we head into the office together. When it’s nice out, it’s very likely a walk will follow from the station to the office building. If it’s gross out, too many things waiting at the office, or laziness overtakes, the subway is a classic and frequent decision.

It’s slightly after 8:00am. I arrive at the office and greet my other early-bird colleague and proceed to filter through mail, organizing myself for the day as other teammates arrive. The view from the window is pricelessly wonderful here in Philadelphia and it’s rather amusing to be able to receive your news information from the messages filtering across the FOX NEWS banner.

In our news, it’s congress season, so there’s a bit of chaos in the office these days. There’s lots of open dialogue to let out frustrations but also to express excitement in the wins. The successes are so important.  We have responses from authors and successful submissions, as well as praises from clients. This is all in addition to the typical meetings scattered throughout the day, both internally and externally with clients. Amazingly, all my meetings were canceled and I’m appreciating the extra time to get through things, like applying pressure to reviewers, cleaning up Datavision, working on financial items, redoing timelines, and calming anxious clients. As they say, “there’s never a dull moment in publications!”

Since it is busy nowadays, lunch is often taken at desks or quickly obtained and brought back, but escaping in the afternoon becomes essential to ones sanity in the workplace.

All of a sudden it’s 4 o’clock in the afternoon. Where did the day go?  There have been highly entertaining conversations about food or fun to break up the day; I’m convinced that laughter is contagious as we share crazy stories or sarcastic retorts. We certainly aren’t a dull group! At the end of the day, we’re all in this together!

Read on, it’s worth it….

The day typically begins with a warm welcome from colleagues when I walk through the door.

It’s 08:50 and already the office atmosphere suggests another busy day. The buzz of activity at Solaris Health could give a visitor the impression that we are an extension of the London Stock Exchange – all this energy and running around.

No sooner am I comfortably settled than the call goes out for our monthly breakfast team meeting. Always well attended, I’m told that this is due to the educational content and news updates, but I cannot help thinking that the coffee and pastries help! Today there are two main topics. Firstly, we receive advice from the management team on how to build strong and effective working relationships with the very important procurement managers at our client companies. This is quickly followed by an update on World Bedwetting Day and the tremendous profile-raising social media campaign that we are coordinating. This generates loud applause, much discussion and a genuinely happy team. Finally, we have some news regarding another new business win, two pitches to which we have been invited, and a couple of forthcoming social events. Looks like we’re going to be busy, both working and playing.

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Simon Page, Managing Scientific Director at Cambridge Medical, sends this update from Cambridge…

At Cambridge Medical, we are always on the lookout for good reasons to have cake, and #MedComms Day 2017 provided another golden opportunity. These two baked delights were decided upon because of their similarity to every proofreader’s favourite punctuation marks – the oft-confused hyphen and en dash (or “N-rule”). Over cake, the Cambridge team enjoyed taking part in @OxPharmaGenesis’s treasure hunt around Oxford – thanks guys!

Energised by the cake, the team returned to their desks for a varied afternoon of medical communications projects, with team members working on a mix of publications, medical affairs projects, and value materials. The work proves to be as varied as the weather, however, and as team members start to head off at 17:00, the sun has disappeared and it looks like we could be in for a wet cycle home!