A PNC Classic from 2019 with Dr. Andrew Wilner – 361

Dr. Andrew Wilner discovered early that he could develop a career that would blend medical writing and the locum life. He has always been a dedicated writer. And he is passionate about medicine. 

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Writing has been a part of his life since high school. After medical school and internship, Andrew became an emergency room doctor while trying to decide the next steps for his career.

Using the flexibility that came with the ER job, Andrew continued to write. And that temporary ER job “was actually locum tenens. I never knew of it as such,” said Andrew. It not only allowed him to write books and continue his clinical work, but it helped him discover an interest in neurology. This led to his applying for a neurology residency at McGill University in Montreal. He was later accepted to the program and eventually completed an epilepsy fellowship at McGill.

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Full-Time Writer

In Andrew’s opinion, there’s not much “literature” in the scientific literature. Writing a scientific paper is just a skill and “pure drudgery.” It’s not a creative endeavor. But writing for online journals, news outlets, and blogs requires a creative mind, and satisfies Andrew’s need to write.

As an epilepsy expert, he wanted to write a book about epilepsy, so he published Epilepsy 199 Answers: A Doctor Responds to His Patients’ Questions, in 1996.

  • What is epilepsy?
  • Is it contagious?
  • What’s an EEG?
  • Can I drive a car?

Later, he wrote a book for clinicians, Epilepsy in Clinical Practice: A Case Study Approach.

While between jobs, he started doing interviews at conferences writing news articles for written publications. He found he was quite good at it, sometimes turning a 3-day conference into twenty or more published articles.

He developed relationships with editors. As the Internet exploded, he wrote blog articles and news stories for online publications such as Medscape, KevinMD, and Neurology Times. He had to hustle and write a lot but earned a living with his writing.

He transformed his blog posts into his first non-epilepsy book, Bullets and Brains. It opens with an essay about the impact of a brain injury on the life and career of a very capable, high-performing congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords. She was shot in the brain. And Andrew explored the idea that “bullets and brains (obviously) don’t mix.”

Blend Medical Writing and the Locum Life

With the growth of the Internet and the ability to work remotely as a writer, Andrew decided to travel. “One of my passions is scuba diving, so I went off to the Philippines. I discovered that I could sit there with my little laptop and write my articles,” said Andrew.

However, he had to consider whether he wanted to “retire” from clinical work permanently. He found that as he distanced himself from the clinic and seeing patients, his knowledge became less relevant, and he became less desirable as a speaker.

I think if you’ve been a dedicated clinician, taking some time off is only a good thing. – Andrew Wilner

So he decided to give clinical practice another shot. After writing for a living for ten years, he decided to return to clinical practice. It wasn’t easy, not because he had forgotten anything, but because the system wasn’t flexible.

He had difficulty obtaining malpractice coverage. However, a small hospital desperate for neurology coverage helped him return to clinical medicine by arranging temporary supervision that demonstrated his competence to practice.

He then sought to balance his clinical work and medical writing. He started by pursuing locum tenens positions. In the process, he began a whole new chapter of his life. And it eventually led to the publishing of another book.

That’s the first half of my interview with Andrew Wilner. Next week we’ll pick up here and talk about his experiences living the “locum life,” and how those experiences inspired him to write his latest book The Locum Life: A Physician’s Guide to Locum Tenens.

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today’s episode. 

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