Most people think of WebMD as the place to research their medical symptoms – and to possibly psych themselves out when their vague symptoms match up with various cancers.
But WebMD, a company that provides the public with information about health conditions, medications, and general well-being, is more than a website where people can research what might ail them. The corporation also operates Medscape, which provides articles, education, and medical information for physicians and medical researchers.
Patricia McKnight, a recent UW-Milwaukee graduate with double majors in English and Journalism, Advertising, & Media Studies, is Medscape’s associate editor of oncology. After a few years of working in traditional media, McKnight pivoted to medical journalism where she now helps keep doctors and scientists around the world informed about the latest trends and treatments in medicine.
She sat down to talk about her job, her articles, and how UWM helped pave her way.
As an associate editor at Medscape, what kind of work do you do?
We search medical journals for the latest studies that have come out. I work in the oncology department, so it’s a lot of cancer-related things that I write and edit.
I assign stories to some of the writers. When I first started … I mostly was writing, but now I do mostly editing. I’ll look at the different journals and I’ll see what’s interesting and what I might need a staff writer to cover. I’m also in charge of the newsletters that go out to subscribers. There are different newsletters, like one about breast cancer or cervical cancer. So I’m going through the journals to see what I can assign that will coincide with what I need in a newsletter.
Is there a story you covered that you’re particularly proud of?
There is! Most women, when they undergo radiation treatment for breast cancer, have a lot of side effects, especially on the affected area. So (the treatment area) might be swollen, or it might chafe. Even though it’s not life-threatening, it does hinder a lot of everyday movements. Like, you might want to go do aerobics – doctors recommend that cancer patients move and get exercise. So if you have radiation dermatitis, this skin condition from radiation on your breast, you can’t do a lot of things and it’s just a pain to have on top of breast cancer.
I did a story on a new type of film. It looks kind of like a Band-Aid, but it’s transparent and it minimizes the effects of radiation dermatitis for a lot of breast cancer survivors.
It was a nice story about something that makes the lives of these women easier. When I was writing this, my grandmother had breast cancer. I did a lot of breast cancer news because I wanted to find out as much as I possibly could.
What do you find rewarding about your job?
It’s a slower pace, which I really appreciate. I feel like my job is important because there are so many people that are affected by cancer. We are informing your medical staff about the latest treatments, or which drugs are getting approved that they should recommend for their patients. I think this kind of news is really important and a lot of people don’t see it in their daily news scroll.
You’re a Black woman writing about health care, an industry which has historically ignored or neglected people of color. Do you think you offer any perspectives that may have been missing?
I think it’s important to have diversity in your newsroom and diversity in the stories that you cover. There are a lot of disparities, especially in cancer research, in cancer treatments, in clinical study populations. And it’s not just Black people; a lot of minorities aren’t really considered in clinical trials, which is very, very important. We have people who try to make it seem like, oh, we’re all the same. We’re not, biologically, and so we need diversity in the clinical trials to see how this drug affects this population. It’s been an uphill battle, to say the least.
Before you started working at Medscape, you were a more traditional journalist. Tell me about your career and how you made the switch to medical journalism.
During my senior year at UWM, I was doing my internship at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. My time there was great. That’s where I took my (era-defining) photo. After my internship ended, I wanted to stay in Milwaukee for a little bit, and so I was a producer at TMJ4, the NBC affiliate news station. After that, I got tired of the snow and moved to Florida (to work at) the Sarasota Herald Tribune, which was great. I got to write on the Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie story. I was the lead reporter for that.
Florida started to get expensive, so I looked for a different position at Newsweek. It was covering global affairs. That’s when the Ukraine and Russia conflict started, so I did a lot of stories there. Then Roe v. Wade was overturned, so I got to write a lot on that. But the culture just wasn’t for me at Newsweek, so I ended up here at WebMD.
I learned (about medical journalism) by doing a lot of research on my own after work. I didn’t go to school for biology or anything like that. Being a self-starter, I was talking to my manager and he gave me some resources. It wasn’t a requirement that I do this in my free time. But in order for me to get the style of medical journalism, I had to do things in my own time and be proactive with my learning curve.
I learned (about medical journalism) by doing a lot of research on my own after work. I didn’t go to school for biology or anything like that. Being a self-starter, I was talking to my manager and he gave me some resources. It wasn’t a requirement that I do this in my free time. But in order for me to get the style of medical journalism, I had to do things in my own time and be proactive with my learning curve.
How did UWM prepare you for your career in journalism?
My professors were amazing – Jessica McBride, Jane Hampden-Daley. I was literally just messaging Marc Tasman yesterday. The valuable feedback and guidance I got from them really helped me early in my career because I could call them up if I was working on a story, even though I wasn’t a student anymore. It was so refreshing to have professors like that.
By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science