I am a nursing major, so I’m going to become familiar with the various forms of writing in the field of nursing. As the name of the field implies, nurses are the ones doing the writing in this field. There are many different genres of writing in this field. According to An Insider’s Guide to Academic Writing, “a student of nursing might encounter any number of additional forms of writing tasks, including nursing care plans for individuals, reviews of literature, and community or public health assessment papers” (297).
For all of these forms of writing, nurses have to be aware of their audiences. For example, when nurses are writing discharge instructions for their patients, they need to write in a way that will be easily understandable for their patients. An Insider’s Guide to Academic Writing explains this, saying “a nurse communicating with a patient, for example, might have to translate medical jargon so that the individual can fully understand his or her treatment” (297). Alternatively, when a nurse is writing a literature review or scholarly research report, they have to write with more medical and academic verbiage, because their audience for these forms of writings is other medical professionals. The same principle applies to patient care plans, as these will have to be read and implemented by other medical professionals as well. All of these forms of writing in nursing follow specific structures. The the information in these genres is relayed in an efficient and concise manner, like tables or titled sections, rather than in paragraph form. This makes it so it is not so complex or confusing to read that the important information becomes lost to the reader. Some examples of these forms of writings in nursing can be seen below.
*Picture order= discharge instructions, research report, patient care plan*pictures courtesy of National Academic Press, BMC Medical Research Methodology, and invitein.orgNursing includes primary, secondary, and observational research. A nurse could provide primary research by conducting his/her own experiment or trial and recording the data from this. Nurses are constantly learning from other medical professionals by reading medical articles and textbooks in nursing school. A nurse is constantly making observations on the job by watching their patients’ to make sure they are stable, and reacting when they have observed that something is wrong.
The most important part of writing in nursing is the factual aspect of it. In all forms, the information being relayed is specific and scientific. Even when the information has to be written in a less scientific language, it is still factual and exact. This is because nursing is dealing with the lives of their patients or at least is going to be reviewed by other medical professionals, so all the information they write about, whether it is in a research paper or a care plan, has to be precise.
Even though nursing is mostly caring for patients, there is still a lot of writing that nurses have to do on a daily basis… I guess that means there's no escaping writing for me.
Thanks for reading !!!
Liv