Technical and Medical Writing Certificate

Are you planning a career in the healthcare field or working there already? Oregon Tech’s Technical & Medical Writing certificate can help prepare you for the job market or boost your skills while on the job. This certificate starts with core writing principles from composition and technical writing and then builds in healthcare-specific content through electives in medical terminology, health communication, and medical sociology. Whether you plan to work directly with patients or in an administrative role, clear writing is key in healthcare, and this certificate will boost your writing skills for a technical and medical context.

Graduates of the Online Technical & Medical Writing certificate should be able to:

• Analyze needs of the audience, situation, and stakeholders unique to the health professions.
• Use language and conventions of medical communities to produce audience-specific documents and genres in the health care profession.
• Identify, analyze, and solve communication problems for multiple audiences with medical information needs.
• Use accepted rhetorical, linguistic and design theories to craft user- and reader-centered documents.
• Design and create documents using a variety of industry-standard tools.
• Demonstrate professionally-appropriate ethical reasoning, including awareness of intellectual property in the creation and management of documents.
• Manage the production of complex, large-scale projects and their related documentation.

You can complete this 19-credit certificate in as little as 9 months, or complete it at a slower pace to meet your needs.

Core Courses (11 credits)

• WRI 121Z Composition I (first course)
• WRI 227Z Technical Writing
• WRI 327 Advanced Technical Writing or WRI 350 Documentation Development

Focus Classes (8 credits)

• BIO 200 Medical Terminology
• BUS 313 Health Care Systems & Policy or SOC 205 Current Health Issues or SOC 225 Medical Sociology
• COM 346 Health Communication or PWR 306 Writing for the Health Professions

The Technical and Medical Writing certificate includes 19 credits of coursework. This certificate can be stacked with the UX Writing certificate and the Proposal & Grant Writing certificate.

Financial aid is not offered for this program but a payment plan is available. Follow the steps below to get started:

1. Submit the Non-Degree Seeking Application.
2. Watch for an email from the Admissions Office about registration.
3. Register yourself for classes when registration opens.

Non-degree seeking students do not pay application fees since they are not attending a degree program and are limited to 8 credits per term.

Oregon Tech awards formal certificates upon completion of all requirements. The Registrar's Office advises soon-to-be graduates to submit the Application for Degree two terms before completing the certificate. A certificate cannot be awarded without the application found in TechWeb.