This document presents five scenarios that medical writers may face and provides advice for how to handle emergency situations. The scenarios include: 1) A client who fails to pay for completed work. 2) A freelancer who discovers another writer completed her assignment. 3) Balancing a lucrative job vs time with family. 4) A nightmare client who makes constant revisions. 5) Realizing key source material was accidentally deleted before an imminent deadline. For each scenario, multiple response options are given and pros and cons discussed.

1. Dial 911:
Emergencies in Medical Writing
June 28, 2013

2. Over the Next 30 Minutes…
• We’ll present five scenarios that cover
common (and not so common) emergency
situations faced by medical writers and people
who hire medical writers
• If you have questions, use the chat function
either within the Google Event listing or
YouTube. We will have someone monitoring
each of these areas.

3. Scenario 1:
The Disappearing Client

5. What Should Arnold Do?
1. Chalk it up as a lesson learned and forget about the money. Next
time, work out of the terms of a contract for any new client so
that you receive payments in milestones along the way. That way,
you don’t have to go begging at the end of the project.
2. Keep plugging away at your contact. She can’t ignore you forever.
3. Try another avenue of attack by reaching out to someone else at
the company, especially in higher levels. Try your contact’s boss,
or their boss. Basically, whoever’s name you can find on the
company web site.
4. Hire a lawyer. You don’t have time to put up with this BS. Once
the first threatening letter arrives on your client’s desk, they’ll
see that you are not messing around.

6. Scenario 2: Sneaky Sneaky

8. What Should Kimberly Do?
1. Stop bellyaching. You got a great product on time so obviously,
Kim gave this to someone whose work she trusts. Who cares
who did the actual brunt of the work?
2. Have a frank discussion with Kim to explain your concerns and
listen to what she has to say. Perhaps you can both come to a
suitable understanding that doesn’t destroy the relationship
you have built with her over the years.
3. Cross Kim off your list of potential freelancers. How are you
ever going to be able to trust her in the future? Plenty other
fish in the sea.
4. You have the emails showing who the true developer of these
slides was so why not just reach out to that person directly for
future work since he did such a good job with this project?
Maybe this will be a blessing in disguise.

9. Scenario 3: Love vs. Money

11. What Would You Tell Edna?
1. Take the job and forget the Eastern Shore of Maryland. With the money
you’ll make from this job, you’ll be able to take your husband to Paris. I’m
sure he won’t mind so much then!
2. Why not make this a working vacation? Your husband likes to play golf,
doesn’t he? Send him off to the course for a few hours so that you can
dedicate yourself to this work. Hopefully, you can get enough done so
your nights are free.
3. Why not see if you can outsource the work to one of your trusted
colleagues before you turn the job down? It’ll only take a few hours for
you to QC the work before you turn it in. Maybe you can negotiate a
finder’s fee so everyone will win and no one’s the wiser.
4. Politely turn the job down and explain that your marriage is more
important than this client relationship. You need to have some
professional boundaries.

12. Scenario 4:
The Nightmare Client

14. What Should Dudley Do?
1. Take a deep breath, suck it up, and stay on the job. Every
revision means more money, right?
2. Explain to your client politely that you’d like to extract
yourself from this assignment as your schedule has become
too busy to accommodate these unforeseen changes, but
remind them that you’d be happy to consider working for
them in the future
3. Explain to your client impolitely that they need to learn how
to treat their freelancers and better value their time.
4. Stop answering your phone and responding to their emails
(ie, give them a taste of their own medicine)

15. Scenario 5: At the 11th Hour

17. What Would You Tell Charlene?
1. Enlist your computer-savvy nephew to see if he can open the original file,
even at the risk of burning through another day without the material you
need. If he can recover the file, you can still get the project done on time
and your client will never know the difference.
2. Search online to see if the slides are available via webcast on the EAIP
site. Heck, even if you have to buy the slides from the EAIP, it’s a better
alternative than revealing your flub to the client.
3. Tell your client that your computer died and ate all your files, including
your email and the slides in question. Ask her to resend the slides, and
assure her you will still get the assignment in on time. You might sound a
little flaky – where’s your automated data back-up system? – but at least
you don’t have to admit to being a procrastinator.
4. Come clean with the client, apologize for not noticing the problem
sooner, and ask her to resend the slides. Meet the deadline with a really
good article, and all will be forgiven.