Prompt #3: Writing in the Medical Field

Photo credit:www.cmccd.edu

I recently interviewed a family friend that is a nurse and I asked her about what kind of writing she does for her job in the medical field to get an idea of how writing is used in many career paths. Here are the questions that I asked and a summary of what she said when she responded:

• What kinds of things do you normally write for your job? How do you write them?

Things a nurse normally writes are care plans for patients, patient charts, and paperwork for patients and the hospital. She said she writes them usually with pen and as neat as she can so other people can read what the chart says. This is a common rule throughout different hospitals so everyone can read charts and paperwork without any confusion.

• What are your usual daily responsibilities for your job?

Daily responsibilities for nurses are writing the things mentioned above, taking care of patients, give physical exams to patients and ask them about their medical history and prep them for what they need to be prepped for (depending on what they are in the hospital for). The woman I interviewed is specifically a neonatal nurse, so she takes care of newborn babies and give them constant care as they need it after they are born.

• What are some common misconceptions about your job or field? How do you use writing and communication to work around those misconceptions?

Some common misconceptions about nursing are that it is the easy version of a doctor, all nurses do is basic care for patients and they aren't qualified to do much else, it is easy to get a job in the nursing field, and nurses just do paperwork and other things that doctors don't want to do. Nurses can use writing and communication to work around these misconceptions by showing what they know in their writing and speaking up about what they think a diagnoses could be or if they have any clever suggestions for doctors, other nurses, or anyone in a hospital. Also, any nurse could have a blog or some kind of website or posts that voice their opinion about any of these misconceptions. That way, people on the internet can see what it is like from a nurses perspective to be judged in these ways.

• What other ways of communication do you use for your job?

Other types of communication nurses use for their job are cell phones, pagers, talking in person, phones in the hospital to communicate with other nurses/doctors. These types of communication can be used for many jobs nowadays since technology has become so advanced.

I have discovered that there are many different uses of communication in my field. My field isn't nursing, specifically, but nursing is very similar to the profession that I am looking to go into. This means that the methods of communication for any job in the medical field are either very similar or basically the same. These methods of communication are so important because, without them, staff working around a hospital wouldn't know what is going on with patients, other staff, etc. People within a hospital wouldn't be able to communicate with each other as easily and they could really only talk to each other in person if they wanted to because there would be no advanced technology.

In the end, without technology, writing, and communication, a hospital setting wouldn't be as efficient as it is now. We need these types of communication for everything, especially nowadays.