Jacob Taylor
Nursing
is becoming highly sought after job more and more everyday since the rate of
living is also going up everyday. Since health is up that means more people are
alive, which means there is more need for nurses. Although nursing is a job that will always
have jobs its not an easy job, and takes a large amount of studying and
training.
According
to the American Nurses Association “Nursing is the protection, promotion, and optimization of health
and abilities, prevention of illness and injury, alleviation of suffering
through the diagnosis and treatment of human response, and advocacy in the care
of individuals, families, communities, and populations”. Nursing is a job that
requires a lot of science background. To become a nurse at the University of
Louisville you have to take a minimum of 18 credit hours just in science
classes. Although Science is a very important aspect of nursing it’s not the
only one. English is a crucial and necessary class for becoming a nurse. “At the
baccalaureate level, it is expected that the RN could also write short articles
for publication and become involved in nursing research. This would require a
higher level of writing sophistication”(Dr. Altman). These expectations are put
on nurses because they need to be able to write very objective notes, research,
and write research papers.
In
preparation for this paper I interviewed two nurses, one active the other not,
the one thing they had in common when asked what was important in there field
when it came to writing, both said reports. Bernard Beins, from the APA,
explains reports as “… a story of a persons life”, which is a very accurate. Reports
are an observation of a patient that will help the doctor or a nurse know how
much medicine they’ve had or need as well as any other information needed to be
known about the patient. The objective of reports for nurses is to “ write a
report that is objective and precise as possible along with being legible for
the doctor to read” according to Dr. Taylor.
Reports
can be one of the most important parts of a nurse’s job and they need lots of
attention, a bad report could be life or death. In both of my interviews, with
Dr. Taylor and Mrs. Combs, bad report stories were told where the doctor had
written down illegibly the amount of medicine needed and the wrong dosage was
given to the patient. In Mrs. Combs story “a
doctor would write his orders they would write it really sloppy at times and it
would look like one amount but actually it would be another. This resulted in
the patient receiving the incorrect medication resulting in hypotension that
required a bolus of fluids to increase the patients pressure”. Even with the invention of Electric reports, which
are done on a computer, not all hospitals have these, so it is still very important
that nurses practice good handwriting.
A
lot of people believe that a nurses job ends after leaving the hospital, it is
not. Nurses
conduct research, use research in practice, and teach about research
(Nursingworld.org) Nurses are required to continue to research and write
analysis after they’ve made it into the health services. “…[Research
papers are] a systematic search for a deepening knowledge of our understanding
and meant to answer our questions about our patients, treatments and many other
things.” According to University of Ontario Institute of Technology’s college
of nursing. Researching helps nurses understand modern medicine, and ways to be
a better nurse.
Research involves,
but is not limited to, going to Research conferences, and reading other nurses,
and doctors research papers. Without research we would still be practicing old
medicine that is outdated and unnecessary. Research can be affective as finding out that
leeches don’t cure patients to discovering a way to cure cancer.
The understanding
of “sophisticated English” is very crucial to a nurse’s job. If he or she
cannot write like this it could end a persons life or prevent that nurse and
other nurses growth in the knowledge of their field. In order to be able to
understand “sophisticated English” nurses need to take upper level English
classes, Latin classes, to help with medical terms, along with a medical
terminology class. Dr. Taylor stated” nothing helped me more with writing in
nursing more then taking Latin classes, it helped me be as objective as I am
today”. Nurses need to make sure they are up to the expectation of them. With
out an understanding of writing you cannot make it as a nurse.
