Teaching Writing in the Health Professions: Perspectives, Problems, and Practices

by Michael J. Madson (Editor)

Overview

This collection provides a research-based guide to instructional practices for writing in the health professions, promoting faculty development and bringing together perspectives from writing studies, technical communication, and health humanities.

With employment in health-care sectors booming, writing instruction tailored for the health professions is in high demand. Writing instruction is critical in the health professions because health professionals, current and aspiring, need to communicate persuasively with patients, peers, mentors, and others. Writing instruction can also help cultivate professional identity, reflective practice, empathy, critical thinking, confidence, and organization, as well as research skills. This collection prepares faculty and administrators to meet this demand. It combines conceptual development of writing for the health professions as an emergent interdiscipline with evidence-based practices for instructors in academic, clinical, and community settings.

Teaching Writing in the Health Professions is an essential resource for instructors, scholars, and program administrators in health disciplines, professional and technical communication, health humanities, and interdisciplinary writing studies. It informs the teaching of writing in programs in medicine, nursing, pharmacy and allied health, public health, and other related professions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367750886
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	11/12/2021
Pages:	222
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Michael J. Madson is an assistant professor in the technical communication program at Arizona State University. He teaches courses related to health-care writing and user experience.

Table of Contents

Introduction Writing in the health professions: An emergent interdiscipline for teachers Part I: Writing in medicine and public health 1 Teaching medical students to write proper clinical notes using expectancy-value theory 2 What can we learn about ‘advanced literacy for research’ in two Colombian graduate programs? 3 Supporting medical writers in the twenty-first century Part II: Writing in nursing 4 Developing students’ professional identity through writing and peer review 5 Nursing simulations and intermediary genres: Bridging students’ classroom and clinical writing 6 Semi-embedding’ writing center specialists in a masters level nursing course to improve perceptions of writing support 7 Writing-related threshold concepts in doctoral nursing education Part III: Writing in allied health and pharmacy 8 When the classroom is the workplace: Developing writing curricula for EMS and fire service training programs 9 Online instruction on scholarly writing and library research in a physician assistant program: Laying the foundation for developing academic literacies and examining evidence-based research 10 Enhancing communication competencies: A model for pharmacy and writing and communication center partnerships Part IV: Writing in interprofessional contexts 11 Teaching culturally sensitive care through reflective writing 12 Communicating ‘patient-centered care’: A case study for collaborative writing in the health professions 13 Graphic medicine: Theory, utility, and practice in interprofessional contexts 14 Promoting writing through teacherless writing groups Conclusion The ‘prognosis’ of writing in the health professions

Editorial Reviews

Reviewer: Karen O'Grady, MLIS, MAEd (University of San Diego)
Description: The title of this excellent book describes its content perfectly. The book is relatively short. Its 200 pages are divided into four parts, with each part containing three or four chapters. The first three parts focus respectively on the three disciplines - medicine, nursing, and pharmacy. Part IV discusses writing instruction issues that cross all medical disciplines. A variety of expert authors discuss the theoretical points of teaching writing as a discipline (such as threshold concepts). Then the book provides nuts and bolts descriptions of what has worked, what has not, and what the barriers are for teaching the discipline of medical academic writing. Workshops, peer-review writing circles, and detailed descriptions of other topics, strategies, methodologies, and analysis are defined, described, and analyzed in this well-written book.
Purpose: The editor speaks at length about the purpose of the book and about the need for skilled writing in the medical professions. He provides a six-page introduction that gives an overview of the issues surrounding writing instruction in the medical professions, as well as a short description of what is presented in each chapter. He makes a strong case for the need for this book and is spot-on regarding his claims and observations about medical and nursing graduate school writing and writing for publication in medicine, nursing, and pharmacy. This book completely meets its stated objective of teaching writing in the health professions.
Audience: The book is written for anyone who wants to help people in the medical professions write better. This book will inform librarians; medical, nursing, and pharmacy faculty; writing coaches or tutors helping students in these fields; or anyone designing writing curriculum or any kind of writing course or online tutorial. The book unquestionably meets the needs of writing educators. The book presents several theoretical concepts specific to these medical disciplines and how and why they should learn to write. It presents several explanations of what works and what doesn't, and it clearly and eloquently explains why. Every contributing author's impressive biography is presented at the beginning of the book.
Features: The best aspect of the book is the editing. Unlike many books with several contributing authors, this book comes across with one consistent voice. Each new chapter does not restate the same barriers to writing in these professions, and the vocabulary, tense, and tone are all consistent. Furthermore, part IV, which contains the final four chapters of the book and focuses more generally on writing education topics that apply equally to the different disciplines, makes for a thorough and complete conclusion on this topic. Each chapter has a well-done conclusion, with several references at the end of each chapter. The index is detailed and thorough. Knowing what I personally know about graduate school nurses and their challenges with writing, I find the information presented here to be detailed, correct, and invaluable.
Assessment: I am not familiar with other books that explain and analyze in detail why the writing in medical professions is often poor and what exactly can be done to improve it. Being a nursing librarian, I read the four chapters about graduate school nurses' writing in their entirety, and I now feel equipped to create a program that will improve my students' writing.

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