Is it just me, or does anyone else on the copy side in pharma struggle with fact-checking? I’ve been making the same incredibly frustrating mistakes for a month now, and I’m getting worried about it. Like waking up in the middle of the night feeling like an incompetent fool. Does anyone have any advice or suggestions/resources that could possibly help me improve here? Feeling like I’m deep-sea diving, but never learned to swim. Any encouragement, criticism, snark, sarcasm, or eulogies welcomed.

likeuplifting
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I’m not sure where you struggle with but I’ve maintained a couple of time saving organization tips & tricks over the years.

1. You don’t need a lot of refs and you don’t even need to read all of them. I’ve found that I can have one or two really solid go-to refs (outside of the PI) that can almost always cover 75% of it and those are the only papers I read. The rest I just hit command + F using keywords for the claim to find support.
2. I add the Veeva ref number for all my refs because it makes the T&L easier
3. I keep a master reference folder that has anything of value highlighted. So for each piece I need to annotate and have fact checked, I’ll copy the specific pieces and send over tinge zip file to ED
4. If a claim can’t be supported by a ref in Veeva or a ref that can’t be easily searched on google, don’t waste your time. Chances are medical can support it or the client knows what you can use for it

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Also some writers do this weird thing where they annotate with just a page number and a letter that coincides with an annotated ref but this is extremely useless to anyone else.

The clearest way to annotate I think is: Ref number/Author & year/pg #/column #/paragraph #/line #

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This is a great post. It’s not easy at all. Do books on how to learn annotating exist?

likeuplifting

Ha! I also created a guide—Referencing & Annotating for Dummies! Was doing one on one trading pre-Covid

What sort of mistakes have you been making?

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Core claims documents save time and aggravation. Ask if your brand has one, and if not, ask for the hours to do it.

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And if you don’t have the hours/money to do this, try to get your hands on a previously approved large piece, like a vis aid or brand site that would be likely to have a lot of the main claims in it.

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I wish the powers that be would recognize this, at every agency

likeuplifting

Could you ask one of your medical people to walk you through it? OR do you have a trusted colleague that you can think aloud with/ talk through the issue with?
If you post specifics back here, I am happy to look into it.

helpful

Do you mean mistakes in annotating? Or something else? And are these mistakes getting caught internally before submission?

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What aspect of it? Finding support for claims in references? That’s usually the hardest aspect of it.

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Yeah, if I get a job like this if I can’t find support for a claim within an hour I will usually tell account to reach out to the client to ask for the previously approved piece. I’m not going to spend hours looking for one claim. Especially if it’s not a brand-related claim, because who knows where the previous writer got it from- could be no longer accurate or from a site that’s since been taken down.

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Add asterisks to all your copy and you'll be covered.

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