Outsider Insider View

I am not a nurse, nor do I play one on TV. I'm a professor of English appointed to a school of nursing where I support faculty and students in their writing projects. This gives me an outsider insider view of nursing education.

No one goes into nursing because they love writing. A high school or college student doesn't tell an admissions counselor, "I'm a talented and gifted writer, so I thought I'd become a nurse."

However, writing is essential to nursing in a variety of ways. Nurses write documentation of patients' conditions and treatments. Nurses write care plans. Nurses research and write proposals for changes in practice. Nurses write educational materials for patients. Nurses write health-promotion articles for general-audience periodicals. Nurse scholars and researchers disseminate their findings in written articles and prepared presentations.

Nurses also write creatively in essays and poetry about their experiences.

So while writing is not the attraction of nursing (improving the health or quality of life for patients is that), writing is central to the work of nursing.

Nursing undergraduates (like undergraduates in other practice or technical fields) should be encouraged to write in a variety of media, genres and forms, including informal (like blogs) and creative (like poetry, personal essays, and narrative) writing.

--Thomas Lawrence Long, PhD
http://nursingwriting.wordpress.com/