What is a medical illustrator?
The visual-communications intermediary between the biological and medical sciences and the lay world. We do pictures so people understand medicine and science.

Give me an overall view of what you and others in this field do.
I develop book projects that I subsequently illustrate. I also do some writing, editing and a lot of drawing. Other medical illustrators direct departments or run companies that employ other medical illustrators, photographers and designers or are freelance and do advertising work; illustrate textbooks, magazines and journals; develop Web pages and do electronic art for online medical magazines. Some create medical sculptures for a prosthesis or for teaching devices. A few develop book, film and other projects. Others work for the legal community in demonstrative evidence, creating artwork to educate juries in cases of medical malpractice.

What skills are necessary for entering this field?
You need to be a good artist and draftsman, with or without a computer. You need abilities in design, abstract design and structural design to take complex material and turn it into a teaching device, to tell a story [about] how a surgery goes [or] how a biochemical process happens. In addition, you need a working knowledge of anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, biology, medicine and medical procedures like surgery and so on.

What are the educational requirements?
Most medical illustrators graduate from master's programs specifically in medical illustration. They are usually undergraduates with art majors or biology pre-med majors and art minors. In school, they pick up human and veterinary anatomy, physiology, instructional design, department management and skills in the technology of doing the art. Getting into [programs] is highly competitive.

How do people from other fields get into medical illustrating?
The simplest and most straightforward way [is to] go back to school and get the undergraduate courses that prepare them for the graduate courses. It is possible to get certification that says you have a minimum amount of skills to be a medical illustrator by studying on your own. Medical technolog[ists], surgical nurs[es], [even] physicians become medical illustrators. However, because they haven't gone through a medical-illustration program, they have no credentials that tell the buyer that [they have] a minimum amount of training. For that they can take the certification exam which is administered at the annual medical illustration meeting. That's the CMI.

Are there specialties in this field?
Yes. Medical/biological specialties would be ophthalmology, orthopedics, hand surgery or veterinary medicine. In terms of business, some people specialize only in medical/legal work, others do primarily advertising and others do primarily textbooks. People move relatively easily between those. And we have people who just specialize in sculptures and forensics.

Is additional education required for specialization?
In prosthetics you can choose to follow a prosthetics or medical-sculpture track. You'll do more casting and sculpting. For forensic work you need to take a forensics course and learn, for example, how to take a skull that's found in the woods and put a face on it. The police won't hire you without the course.

Are there opportunities for advancement in this field?
Yes. In institutions - teaching hospitals and so on - you enter as medical illustrator, move up to senior medical illustrator, then into either teaching in one of the medical illustration programs or [being] department director. In freelance you can stay a sole proprietor. You can also develop a business in which you gradually hire other specialties - medical artists, designers, sculptures, computer jockeys, photographers, cinematographers - to create medical education devices.

Who hires medical illustrators?
Medical teaching hospitals, veterinary schools, some medical pharmaceutical companies, medical equipment/manufacturing companies, companies which do medical and biological charts, textbook companies, although most textbook work is done by freelancers. Department jobs are few and far between right now. A student in medical illustration would probably [find a first job] in one of the group practices that have been springing up. In our last survey, more than half of the graduates went that route.

What is the earning potential for an entry-level position?
About $35,000 in a medical-school situation.

What about someone with experience?
Perhaps $5,000 more. Institutions usually hire people right out of school. [A] senior medical illustrator can earn closer to six figures.

What are the hours for someone working in an institution?
Typically 9 to 5.

What types of changes have happened in this field?
When I began, most people looked forward to a career in an institution. There was only a handful of freelancers, situated in the New York or San Francisco/Los Angeles corridor where all the advertising agencies are. The profession has gone from something like 80 percent to 90 percent institutional to 60 percent to 70 percent freelance at this point.

What ethical issues do you deal with?
The medical-legal people have to make a conscious decision to reflect the science accurately and not to be influenced by the lawyers with whom they work, who have a bias in the case. We also run into problems because art is intellectual property. People who produce things are exploited by the distributors of that production. We're constantly in a battle to protect those intellectual rights to our property. We're also engaged in a struggle with companies who use their financial influence in Congress to try to limit our intellectual property rights.

Is it important to stay current?
Absolutely. First, you have to be up on the medical knowledge that's going on because that's what you have to convey to people. Secondly, you have to keep up with the new electronic media because that's how you're going to be conveying it. To keep your certification you have to attend a certain number of continuing education classes.

What do you enjoy most about your job?
People pay me to draw pictures of science. I love science and art. In my case, being a sole proprietor I have control over my time.

What do you enjoy least?
Negotiating contracts and fighting companies that steal from me.

Does this field have growth potential?
I think so. This is an information age and we help convey information to other people. We're the intermediaries between medicine and science and the people who don't know it yet. The Web is a visual medium and what we do is visual media.

What advice would you offer someone interested in entering this field?
Like anything else, it ain't easy. The best advice I ever got was pick out something to work at that you enjoy doing because you're going to be spending a lot of time at it. If someone enjoys science and art, and has the intellectual capacity to handle the science, I think medical illustration would be a lovely profession for him.