What Is a Nurse Writer and How Do You Become One?

A nurse writer is a nursing professional who leverages their experience in the field to create written content.

Their work may be aimed at other medical professionals or at a general audience, in which case they’ll be tasked with demystifying the world of healthcare and clearly communicating complex topics in a way that lay people can understand.

What types of content do nurse writers usually create?

Nurse writers may create content for clinical, promotional, or educational purposes. Specifically, they often produce:

• Educational material for patients: This includes articles and pamphlets designed to inform patients about their health. This might mean explaining medical conditions, outlining treatment plans, or detailing good self-care habits.
• Research articles: Nurse writers can also contribute to academic publications. This kind of writing is often more rigorous than the others and includes case studies and literature reviews.
• Health-related journalism: Some nurse writers produce journalistic work, reporting on the news in the medical field or on contemporary health trends.
• Advertisements: Healthcare companies need to advertise their products just like other businesses, and they often prefer to have their ad copy written—or at least reviewed—by medical professionals, such as nurses.
• Training materials: Nurse writers also sometimes create guides for their colleagues, such as manuals explaining how to perform various procedures.

The work that nurse writers produce may be published in any number of places, including medical websites and blogs (e.g., ones run by clinics and other healthcare companies), journals, and textbooks.

Where do nurse writers work?

Full-time nurse writers are often employed by healthcare institutions, medical journals, universities, or nonprofits.

However, if you’re considering nurse writing as a part-time side job, you’ll almost certainly work on a freelance basis, producing content for many different clients instead of just one employer.

As a freelance nurse writer, you’ll have to hustle to land jobs. The good news is you’ll have a great deal of flexibility and can probably work from home, setting your own schedule and taking on as many gigs as you like (and no more).

To get work as a nurse writer, you’ll need more than a few formal credentials. At minimum, you’ll need to actually be a licensed nurse. This will require a one-year course of study, an associate’s degree, or a bachelor’s degree, depending on what kind of nurse you want to become and where you live.

You’ll also need to take the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX) and meet any further requirements your state has. To learn more about how to become a nurse in your jurisdiction, see the state-by-state breakdown on NurseLicenseMap.com.

The takeaway is that this isn’t a gig that just anyone can do. It really only makes sense to consider it if you’re already a nurse—preferably one with a few years of experience under your belt. (After all, you probably don’t want to pick up a demanding side hustle while you’re still getting used to nursing as a profession.)

What skills do you need to be a nurse writer?

Beyond the credentials listed above, you also need the following skills to succeed as a nurse writer:

• Writing: It probably goes without saying that to be a nurse writer, you need to be handy with the written word. You should have a strong grasp of English grammar and spelling and be able to produce clear and engaging content.
• Self-editing: As a freelance writer of any kind, you should edit and proofread your work, but this is especially important when you’re writing about health and medicine. It’s crucial to make sure your facts are correct (and well-communicated).
• Research: Like many types of freelance writing, nurse writing requires rigorous research. It’s always important to ensure that you’re citing reputable sources and that your facts are in order.
• Collaboration: Writing isn’t always a solo endeavor. Nurse writers often have to collaborate with researchers, clinicians, and other writers and editors. This means you have to be communicative and good at taking constructive criticism.
• Persuasion: Nurse writers sometimes produce work that advocates for public health causes, such as vaccination campaigns or raising awareness about mental health issues. If you plan on taking on those types of jobs, you need to be able to write persuasively as well as clearly.

In addition to those hard and soft skills, being a successful nurse writer also requires you to be proactive and self-motivated.

Healthcare is an ever-changing field, and to write about it effectively, you have to keep up with new research and standards of care. Moreover, as a freelancer, you have to put in hard work to land clients.

Nurse writing can be a very rewarding side hustle, but it’s also one that requires a fair amount of maintenance.

Full-time medical writers (of which nurse writers are a subset) generally earn fairly high salaries—often more than $100,000 per year.

However, as a freelancer, you won’t earn a regular wage. Instead, you may be paid by the word, by the project, or by the hour, with a per-word rate probably being the most common payment structure.

Medical writers of all types tend to make more than other freelance writers due to the specialized nature of their content. $0.15 per word is a fair rate when you’re just starting out, with many intermediate writers charging $0.20–$0.50 per word, and some very experienced writers charging upwards of $1 per word.

Nurse writers who charge by the hour earn similarly high rates, often $50–$150 per hour. (For context, generalist freelancers often make closer to $0.10 per word and $20–$50 per hour.)

What affects your rates as a nurse writer?

With nurse writing, the number one aspect that determines your pay is how experienced you are, both as a writer and as a healthcare professional. The longer your track record is, the more you can charge.

How challenging your content is to produce will also strongly affect how much you can charge for it. If you produce relatively non-technical blog posts aimed at a wide audience, you’ll probably earn less than if you write high-level white papers.

If nurse writing is something you want to pursue, check out the list below to learn how to get started.

Note that this list assumes you’re starting from square one. If you’re already a credentialed and licensed nurse, you can skip the first few steps.

1. Get a nursing degree

Again, if you want to work as a nurse writer, you really should be an actual nurse, which requires a lot of formal study.

Becoming a nurse is a big commitment, and doing so just to become a freelance nurse writer probably isn’t a good idea. That said, nursing is a valuable (and well-paid) profession in and of itself, and if you’re sure that you eventually want to branch out into writing from the get-go, you’re ahead of the game.

There are two types of nurses:

• Licensed practical nurse (LPN): Also called “licensed vocational nurses” (LVNs), these professionals provide medical care, but of a more basic nature than other nurses. Their main focus is on keeping patients comfortable. Becoming a LPN doesn’t require a degree, although it does require completing an accredited nursing program (usually a one-year course of study).
• Registered nurse (RN): These are the “classic” nurses that most people are familiar with. They handle more advanced medical tasks than LPNs. In some states, it’s possible to become a nurse with just an associate’s degree, but most nurses pursue four-year bachelor’s degrees.

Nurse.org maintains a repository of nursing programs for both LPNs and RNs. If you’re interested in becoming a nurse, use that tool to hunt for a well-regarded program near you.

2. Take the National Council Licensure Examination

After obtaining a nursing degree, you’re required to take the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX). Passing this will grant you a nursing license, although you might have other hoops that you’ll need to jump through to practice in your state.

Here again, there are two exams, the NCLEX-RN (for registered nurses) and the NCLEX-LPN (for licensed practical nurses). You’ll obviously need to take the exam that corresponds to the type of nurse you want to become.

3. Gain some nursing experience

Once you have a degree and a license to practice, the next step is to gain real-world nursing experience. You can be a generalist or specialize in something you’re particularly interested in, like pediatrics or emergency care—that’s entirely up to you.

As mentioned, it’s probably best to wait until you have at least 2–3 years of experience before you kick off your writing side gig. Nursing is very demanding, and you’ll probably need to focus on your primary career in the beginning. If you need extra money in the meantime, you can look into other, less intensive side hustles for nurses.

4. Develop your writing skills

Writing is like a muscle that needs regular exercise. The more you practice, the better your writing will be.

There are many paths to improving your writing, but one of the best is to start a personal blog about nursing. You can write about the state of the industry or just share stories from your job (without violating any of your patients’ confidentiality, of course). In addition to teaching you more about writing, your work can also serve as the foundation of your online portfolio.

It’s also important to ensure you have a strong understanding of the particular conventions of healthcare writing. Read nursing journals and online publications to familiarize yourself with them.

Make sure you understand how the many different kinds of healthcare writing relate to each other. Writing for patients requires simple and direct language, whereas research writing is usually more technical and complex.

5. Network with nurses and medical writers

There are several professional organizations, including the Association of Health Care Journalists and the American Nurses Association, that can help you connect with other nursing and medical writing professionals.

Getting involved in your field’s broader community can aid your own learning and give you the resources you need to get your side hustle off to the best possible start. Even something as simple as connecting with other professionals on sites like LinkedIn can be helpful.

6. Create a website and establish a strong online presence

Once you feel confident in your nursing knowledge, it’s time to start putting yourself out there.

We’ve already mentioned the importance of building an online portfolio. Having one will give your potential clients the confidence that you have what it takes to do a good job. If you started a blog in step four, pick your favorite 5–10 articles to use as portfolio pieces.

If you’ve done any writing work for your primary job as a nurse, ask for permission to feature it in your portfolio, too.

Host all of this on a website that outlines both your professional experience and the services that you’re interested in providing as a writer. (As soon as you have testimonials from happy clients, these should go on your website as well.)

7. Start applying for jobs

At this point, it’s finally time to start actually pitching to potential clients and trying to land work as a nurse writer. There are several avenues you can try:

Freelance writing marketplaces

There are a number of freelance writing job boards that you can hunt for work on, as well as general-purpose marketplaces, such as Upwork.

The jobs on these are usually fairly low-paid, and the websites themselves will take a cut of your earnings, but they can still be decent places to find medical writing work when you’re just starting out.

Other online job boards

You can also look for work on other job boards. Although these aren’t meant specifically for freelance writers, you’ll still probably find a lot of part-time and freelance gigs posted to them, including plenty for nurse writers. Try hunting for work on:

• Indeed
• FlexJobs (a great option for freelancers, as this site features exclusively remote and flex-time jobs)
• PharmiWeb (another good fit; it focuses specifically on jobs in the “life science” industry, i.e., in medicine)

Direct outreach

You can also directly contact companies and publications that you know (or suspect) sometimes hire freelance nurse writers. By this point, you’ve hopefully built up enough familiarity with the nursing and healthcare industry that you have a few prospects in mind already. If not, try asking your colleagues for ideas.

Regardless of the method you choose, when you submit your pitch, introduce yourself, link to your online portfolio, and explain what you have to offer as a writer. It might take a while to get your first bite, but if you’re persistent, it will happen eventually.

8. Keep learning and adapting

Like we said, succeeding as a nurse writer means continuously evolving. Once you land your first paid gig, give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back, but don’t let yourself get complacent.

Make sure you stay up-to-date by reading nursing journals, attending conferences, and pursuing other professional development opportunities whenever you spot them. This will benefit both your primary career as a nurse and your nurse writing side hustle.

If you’re particularly successful, you might even be able to make the jump into nurse writing as your new full-time career, if that’s something you’re interested in. Doing that is a big step, but nursing is a field that it’s easy to burn out in, and you may find that having other options does a lot for your mental health and peace of mind, whether or not you actually explore them.