Writing Skills for Nursing and Midwifery Students

Dena Bain Taylor

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781446290743
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Nursing

Nursing and midwifery students are required to communicate in writing in a variety of forms, for a variety of potential audiences including their colleagues, allied health professionals, administrators and, most importantly, their patients and the public.

Dena Bain Taylor is an experienced teacher of writing and critical skills across the range of allied health professions, and understands the types of writing nursing and midwifery students do and the writing issues they face. Her accessible, straightforward book - tailored specifically to the content and conventions of nursing and midwifery curricula - teaches students to write persuasively and correctly, both to support them in their courses and to prepare them for their professional careers.

The book:

- offers practical strategies for using language to achieve clear, persuasive writing;

- provides clear explanations of underlying principles;

- contains samples of good and improvable writing, leading the student step-by-step through the whole writing process;

- focuses on the genres and styles of writing that nursing and midwifery students are typically asked for.

With regular summaries, learning aids, checklists and a glossary of key terms, nursing and midwifery students at all levels will find this book easy to follow and handy to refer to for help with the writing they need to do throughout their course.

INTRODUCTION

1

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OVERVIEW

• Clear thinking = clear writing
• About this book
• A few acknowledgments

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CLEAR THINKING = CLEAR WRITING

Has this happened to you? You have a writing assignment due in two or three weeks, so, as a good time manager, you start working on it now. But you don’t seem to get anywhere. You spend a great deal of time reading course materials and journal articles; you take notes; you write an outline; you struggle to come up with a first page; and in general feel frustrated that so much time has produced so little. Suddenly your deadline is upon you and in the last few days before the paper is due, the mental floodgates open and out pours the paper. Exhausted, you hand it in and wonder, why couldn’t I have done this the first week and saved myself all that time and trouble?

The answer is that clear thinking takes time to develop, and only clear thinking leads to clear writing. Thinking and writing are what we call iterative processes, meaning that they develop each other in a back-and-forth process. In other words, writing is a form of thinking.

Tip: writing is a form of thinking

When you read and make notes, then go handle something else in your busy schedule, your mind continues to process what you’ve read. Even when you experience writer’s block or you procrastinate – preferring to wash the car than to sit back down to write – your brain is still working. Bit by bit, your thoughts on your topic become more clear; one by one the right words to express those thoughts come to you. At a certain point, the results of that thinking process meet up with the impending deadline, and the paper gets written.

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Following the example of the Royal College of Nursing I use the word ‘nursing’ throughout to refer to the whole family of nursing, including midwifery and other allied health professions.

Worldwide, nursing is the largest of the health professions. To prepare students for today’s complex health care environment, nursing and midwifery programs require students to engage in a wide variety of types of writing, from research papers and literature reviews, to clinical reports, to health promotion materials, to emails and online course discussions. As a student in a college or university program, you are learning to communicate in writing to a variety of potential career audiences that include – first and most important – your patients and the public, but also your colleagues, allied health professionals, administrators, agencies, the justice system and others. Like any professional skill, writing can be learned. Thus, the goal of this book is to show you how to write persuasively and correctly, both to support you in your courses and to prepare you for your professional careers.

This book aims to help you master the writing process and teach you the flexibility to tackle any form of communication your course instructors or your career ask of you. It approaches writing skills by focusing on both clear thinking (your ideas and the strategies for conveying them persuasively) and clear writing (the ‘correct’ way to write in nursing). The intention of the chapters in the first half is to establish a solid base of reading, writing, and critical argument skills. Although this book is intended for students at any level of study, if you are beginning your college or university program of study you will find Chapters 2 and 3 especially relevant. Chapter 2 presents practical strategies to manage your life and work to increase success and reduce stress. Chapter 3 sets out the fundamentals of the writing process and tips for navigating it successfully. Chapter 4 covers the foundational skills of writing clearly and persuasively. This section is not intended as a grammar text for students who are seeking extensive description of the general rules and conventions of English grammar and usage. Rather, it focuses on those rules and conventions as they relate to the health professions. Finally, Chapter 5 offers strategies for constructing a persuasive argument.

The second half of the book moves on to more advanced topics, beginning with how to use and acknowledge sources (Chapter 6). Chapter 7 covers the crucial skill of literature review, and Chapter 8, its companion, describes how to analyze and critically appraise the research literature. Chapter 9 moves away from academic writing to cover various forms of professional writing and communication. Chapter 10 addresses presentation skills, which are important in both the professional and academic worlds. To help you become a reflective practitioner, Chapter 11 offers a number of ways to engage in reflective writing. Finally, Chapter 12 consists of a set of sample student papers, to demonstrate some of the forms of writing you are likely to encounter in your course assignments.

A FEW ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Finally, in many ways this book represents a sort of ‘view from my desk’. Over the last 17 years, as director of the Health Sciences Writing Centre at the University of Toronto, Canada, I have worked one-on-one with thousands of students from across the full spectrum of the health professions, from the narrowly biomedical to the broadly sociocultural. They have enriched my understanding of the experience of learning to write, and knowing these students has enriched my personal life beyond words to express. It is to them that I owe my greatest thanks.

I’d also like to acknowledge the following colleagues at the University of Toronto who have kindly given me permission to adapt their instructional materials for this book: Dr Margaret Procter on plagiarism, Leora Freedman on writing a résumé, and Dr Nellie Perret for the glossary of ‘Common Essay and Exam Directions’. I am grateful for the advice of other U of T colleagues on particular sections of the book: Dr Marius Locke on conciseness in scientific writing; Dr Lynda Mainwaring on research design; Dr Roxanne Power on professional and agency writing; Dr Timothy N Welsh on brain plasticity; and Debbie Green, Robarts Librarian, on types of literature. I also received very helpful advice from Alexandra Mayeski of Dykeman Dewhirst O’Brien Health Law, on witness statements; and Shannon Abbaterusso, RN, on clinical documentation. Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to my family and friends for putting up with my writerly quirks and absences as I worked through this book.

ESSENTIAL MANAGEMENT AND STUDY SKILLS

2

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OVERVIEW

•	The view from my desk . . .
•	Starting the right way
•	As the weeks go by . . .
	•	Some useful study habits
	•	Building study notes
	•	Building a personal annotated bibliography
	•	Building a vocabulary book
•	Studying for tests and exams
•	Writing tests and exams
	•	Before the exam
	•	Planning your attack
	•	Answering different types of questions
	•	Take-home exams
•	Glossary of common essay and exam directions
•	When the test is returned . . .

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THE VIEW FROM MY DESK . . .

The premise of this chapter is that disciplined, regularly scheduled work is the key to success; a little work on most days throughout the term is more productive than concentrating all of the effort at crunch time. I have observed that students who do best in their programs tend to adopt the following habits. They

• begin studying in the first week of class;
• manage time and physical demands efficiently, including the unforeseen ones;
• attend all classes, sit near the front, and take notes;
• do all the assigned readings and take notes from them;
• maintain an ongoing list of new vocabulary;
• relate their work to the content and objectives of the course;
• communicate regularly with their instructors, in person or via email;
• gather all available information about assignments and examinations;
• network with fellow students to review lectures and assignments and to share clinical experiences.

STARTING THE RIGHT WAY

College and university programs present students with heavy schedules that include both courses and clinical rotations. Courses often require a large number of readings and assignments. Assignments are generally due in clusters rather than spread equally across a term or semester, adding to the pressure. As a result, it is important when beginning a program of study to ensure you have mechanisms in place to handle the time and physical demands that will be placed on you.

First, ensure that your physical supports are in place. Optimally, you should have a dedicated office space, preferably a room of your own. In choosing the space, consider whether you need quiet to work or whether you are one of those who can easily block out distractions. You should ensure you have shelf space for books, plus a filing cabinet for course papers and journal articles. The ‘archaeological’ system of filing – that is, piles on the desk and floor that are added to as new materials come in – is a terrible time-waster and stressor when something must be found.

Then there are your social supports. Make sure you have a discussion with the significant others in your life, especially if you live with them. You will need their understanding when you have to cancel social occasions, as well as their assistance to take up day-to-day responsibilities you won’t have time for. The time for these negotiations is before you start your studies, not in the middle when you – and they – are stressed by your workload. It is unwise to tes...