Creating a Structured Writing Style in Healthcare

Lyric Randall

Antioch University

        In any organization there are many different forms, genres, tones, and ways to create credibility in a writing environment. Writing is an awesome way for someone to express himself or herself, as well as the program or organization that they represent. An employee of the Regional Office of State, Adriana, was kind enough to allow for her written artifacts to be shared and then further analyzed. Adriana has a hard job because in a days work she tries to reach out to different demographic of people to trying to further educate them. Her written work is an important key factor in creating a successful beneficial program for women and creating writing style that is factual but also easily understandable. To achieve logos, pathos, and create a structured style of writing when communicating through writing is an necessary style in the healthcare profession, but in communication the Every Woman Counts Program has a challenge of demonstrating the value of the program to people who are not well versed in the domain of healthcare.

        For this project the woman that was interviewed works with the regional office of the State’s Every Woman Counts program, which provides free breast and cervical cancer screening, diagnostic services, and public education to low income, and uninsured women age 40+. This program reaches out to women through a network of local community and public clinics, including Planned Parenthood and Public Health Clinics. Mammograms and other diagnostic imaging are provided at all imaging centers that accept Medi-Cal.  The Every Woman Counts program is open to any individuals regardless of their residency status. This program also serves women with high deductibles/co-payments at or below 200% of the federal poverty level, who may need help obtaining a diagnostic service that is not covered by their regular insurance. This program also has a short educational class that features low literacy and is easy to understand information about breast and cervical cancer, as well as the overall concepts of the program. The Department of Health Care Services program also offers basic information about the Affordable Care Act and referrals to Covered California.  This program has bilingual, bicultural staff who speaks English, Spanish, and Mixtec working for them. This allows for all women with different cultural background to seek help and more information. Yet another wonderful service that this program provides is that they regularly attend community events, such as health fairs and food pantries. They go out into the community so they can handout different brochures, flyers, information packets, and other information that they want women to have. All of these artifacts that they handout are factual, linear, and easily understandable.

        When first analyzing artifacts the genera of the work should be noted. From what was observed the genera of these documents and web pages were primarily structured with pathos, ethos, and logic as well as being educational, friendly, and creating a sense of community. The artifacts that were received was t their web page, as well as informative handouts and flyers that Adriana’s program give to people. The documents are that were reviewed were all educational and visually were extreme linear. There are many different facts embedded in the text about breast and cervical cancer in regards to how to prevent, how to treat, and how to qualify through the Every Woman Counts program. The flyers display the educational information in a very clear and concise way that allows for the reader to easily comprehend the information displayed. Because of the friendly style that these artifacts display, it could draw the attention of the target audience and create a sense of support and demonstrate the willingness and want to help. These documents show the reader that the program is friendly and there to help. Being friendly to an audience is important when trying to reach out to a specific group. On the other hand, if the flyers were filled with boring and dry text, it is probable that not as many people would choose to read it, therefore dismissing what the program has to offer. The flyers present information that the program is friendly by displaying numerous pictures of happy women, naturally smiling in a group of other women; intern symbolizing the support of each other. When a woman want and is choosing to become educated on a subject that they are unfamiliar with, it is important for them to feel like they are being supported and part of a family, or a part of a specific group that is welcoming to them. Because of the friendly vibe that the documents project, the Every Woman Counts program is able to create a sense of community, as well as demonstrating to the community of women that are not alone, but rather that they are being supported.

        Next let’s address the writing style and appeal of the documents: ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos is the most predominant style of writing in all of the written artifacts that were analyzed. The Every Woman Counts program chose to write in a way that convinces the reader of the character or credibility of their program. This is important for the program to do because once again, they are trying to make themselves credible so that uneducated women can become more informed. They want to persuade the reader that the program is credible and capable of helping the reader. Supporting ethos in the writing style of the Every Woman Counts program is pathos. Pathos is a way of creating a way to convince an audience of an argument by creating an emotional response. This is accomplished in Adriana’s writing artifacts by showing personable stories. Brief stories are shared about people who haven’t taken advantage of the program or staid up to date on their physical testing, and how their life has changed since they were not safe. “The bottom line is they caught the cancer early, but the complications continued to impact my life and my family”. By quickly telling someone’s hardships like this really persuades an audience to look further into the program so that a story like this doesn’t happen to them. The program is allowing for the readers to create reason within themselves by acknowledging a hardship in someone’s life. Lastly there is pathos. Pathos is a writing style that creates emotion within the reader by convincing the audience of an argument through creating an emotional response. All of the flyers and handouts for the Every Woman Counts program also uses logos, which is a writing style that persuades the audience by reason. This writing style is slightly harder to depict but it is still there: “cancer is a disease in which cells in the body grow out of control. When cancer starts in the breast it is called breast cancer. Breast cancer is the most common cancer in California women”. This statement is very clear and concise, allowing for the audience to be persuaded by reason and logic. Using these three forms of writing is essential in a healthcare profession, because without having a document that is convincing, creates credibility, persuades the audience, generates emotion, and demonstrating the logic behind the concepts of the document, than the Every Woman Counts program would not be credible and thrive like it currently does.

The tone of writing in a healthcare profession, from what has been studied, hasn’t had very much of a dramatic variation. In terms of healthcare, they have a wide ranged audience. They achieve reaching out to this wide range of people through rhetorical appeal and by compiling an extensive amount of research. Adriana was asked, “Where do you get the information to support the claims on your brochures and websites?” Her reply was, “we get our information from a credible source. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control), State of California Every Woman Counts Program, and professional peer reviewed studies”. So as you can see, an extensive amount of research has to be done in order for the Every Woman Counts Program to be credible. They show their credibility throughout their forms by creating very structured documents. The structure is apparent due to the bullet points, boxy, linear fashion of the forms. When looking at the handouts every document is laid out in categories (in boxes), so that the reader can easily compartmentalize the data and better understand the text. Because the text is not too wordy, the Every Woman Counts Programs is able to tackle the challenge of educating women who are not educated. Being able to tailor a message to a specific audience, ultimately, plays a part in effective communication.


Side note... Where I want to go with the rest of this paper.... I want to discuss more about why the Every Woman Counts Program has a challenging task to demonstrate the value of their program. I will be concluding with a few more references to the informative interview I did as well as from the documents I was given.

Week 7 Readings

Everything’s an Argument, Chapter 20

This reading is about plagiarism and academic integrity. When writing a paper it is essential that whatever was being researched is then written and expressed in the author own words that support the claims that are being made. In general, when writing a paper it is good to draw ideas from research that has been conducted, but the writer needs to use their own creative ways to put together the research. For example, I am doing this write now. I am reading a passage and then rewriting/summarizing what was read in my own creative way. This chapter also discusses how when full credit is given to the sources that were researched, ethos in academic arguments are enhanced. I think that this will be a key factor when we write our final paper. This chapter also discusses how to site researched sources throughout the body of papers. Again, it is key to pay credit to others work that you have read and referenced.  From what I gathered, the best way to not plagiarize your work is to read sources, jot down a few notes, and from there create your own statements to make on the subject.

“Annoying Ways that People Use Sources”

This chapter discusses how “annoying” it is when writers do not cite their sources properly. This could be due to an author not knowing what the academic standards of the U.S. are, or they simply don’t care to properly cite their source. By an author choosing no to properly site their source, they are choosing to make their work less credible. When creating the body of a text, it is important to take the readers perspective into account and try to write with a style that allows readers to interoperate your phrases or questions either critically or accepting. Both depend on what the context of the paper is discussing. Another key point from this reading is: tailor to your audience. By tailoring to an audience, the author is creating a purpose, and taking into consideration that the subject might be taken differently depending on who is reading it. It is also important to se the stage for the readers. Adding quotes, describing where that quote came from, and demonstrating how a reader should translate the quote can do this. Another point that this author writes about is perhaps putting the question at the beginning of the paragraphs strongly hooks the reader. This will be something to keep in mind while writing my own paper. When placing a quote in a piece of writing, this author suggests “conceder taking the time to surround each question with guidance to your readers about what you want them to think about the quote”. This is important for an author to shape and guide their reader. This author also talks about “the fix”. There are many different steps to fixing your work; return to each question and decide why its there, read the work out loud, and double-check that the in-text citations are properly cited in your works cited page. The biggest key point that I took away from this chapter is that everyone has different writing styles, and what might bother one reader might be exactly what another reader wants to here. It’s all about creating credibility, citing sources, and catering to your target audience.

Reading Week 6

Chapter 16. Everything's an argument:
This chapter opens with discussing what is a general research paper touches on. The papers entail careful reading, accurate reporting, and conscientious commitment to truth. There are many different ways to construct an academic paper and for the reader to tell that it is one. One example is that most research papers draw upon sources and build and argument from research that has been done; or the academic paper is stiff where the authors done disappeared. It is important to carefully structure research that has been done so different misconceptions cannot be made. The majority of this chapter is primarily about developing an academic argument. There are many different "steps" to creating a good academic argument. First one needs to choose a topic that they want to explore and then get to know the conversations surrounding the topic. Following this one needs to what they know and what they need to know. Next a claim needs to be made, or in other words create a strong thesis statement. Once the author has their thesis they need to consider the rhetoric stance and the purpose of their paper that they are going to create. When writing the academic paper it is key to think about who the audience of the paper might be, and more often than not there will be multiple different audiences. When it comes time to sit down and writ a solid academic argument paper the author needs to weed through evidence and claims (while keeping good documentation) that they have gathered and choose what is supporting evidence of their claim. It is important to also to think about organization, tone, and style. After the draft has been completed, the author should take time to reflect on what they composed and then go back and fully edit the academic argument paper.


Understanding Rhetoric:
This awesome comic discusses how every conversation can be an argument as well as how talking about both sides of an argument is important. Argument can be tricky, most of the time one person always feels like they have to be right, but in reality they should be arguing for a certain position not a claim that they made. The best way to describe what this comic is about, is that everything can be an argument! Look on every side, from every angle, and you can dig deeper into creating a well rounded argument.


Shitty Rough Drafts:
Every good author has shitty rough drafts! Overall, this story is about how writers should sit down, write a shitty draft or two, re-read, go back through and revise. As the story says "very few writers know what they are doing until they've done it". What I drew from this is that every good piece of writing needs time to blossom, it needs time to fully unfold and manifest into beautiful writing.


Chapter 7. They Say I Say:
All writing is conversational. This was the first line that stood out to me in this chapter because I believe this to be very true. It is important for the author of a paper to address the important questions that the reader might have. Who cares? Why does any of this matter? For authors to address the question of who cares, the author can create a template to better demonstrate to the reader why they should care. To address the question of why does any of this matter, the author can create an appeal to something that the audience already cares about. It is always important to keep the reader in mind and make sure that you are answering all of the questions that they may potentially have!



 

Thesis

Here are two possible thesis statements:

• When composing a writing artifact it is curtail to proofread, be concise, and most importantly know your audience, 

• To be a credible writer it is important to maintain clarity, create the preferred tone for the document, and to have the perfect writing style for the set audience. 

I also have a small list of the main key words that I picked up on while interviewing:
know your audience
proofread
writing style (always changes)
concise
clarity
tone
credibility

Week 5 Readings

“How to Read Like a Writer”

I really enjoyed reading this text. It made me really think how writing and reading go hand in hand as well as teaching the reader about different styles and formats. When I write a paper I generally sit down and write my thoughts in sequence and then go back and edit, putting different words or sentences together differently. This reading however made me realize that there are so many questions I should be asking myself before I even begin my paper. I should always consider the word-by-word and sentence-by-sentence process, “all writing consists of a series of choices”. All of the different choices that the author makes allows for their writing style and techniques to shine through. It is important for the reader to think about why the author made those choices, what their overall goal was and how it could have changed if they chose to word it a different way. Another thing I gathered from “How to Read Like a Writer” is that words, sentences, pages, and books are all meant to be re-read! It can be more powerful for the reader if they choose to do so. Lastly I gathered that the reader should always ask questions! Nothing is spelled out so crystal clear that there aren’t some questions that can be formed, you should always explore the text and create an ever-ending list of questions.

They Say, I say, Chapter 11

Reading this text made me conceder how I interact with my classmates in a class discussion, do I disregard what the person before me said or do I choose to engage and connect with the person before me? I feel like I could go both ways. I really do try to listen to what the person had to say before I speak out in class and acknowledge what they said and try to relate what I have to say to what they were just mentioning. On the other hand I might have a counter opinion and choose to not touch on what the person before me discussed, it’s like I almost disregarding what the person before me had to say. I believe we are all guilty in wanting to say what is on our mind and wanting to set ourselves apart and speak our own voice. From now on I will take the advice from the reading and try to connect with what the person before me just said. 

They Say, I say Chapter 9

I have always been taught to cater my academic writing to my professor and to sound “smart” by using big words and sophisticated sentences. This reading made me realize that I don’t always have to do this, it is okay for to express myself in my academic papers and I can use day-to-day language and have that be accepted. This reading said that informal writing is okay! Informal writing allows for the reader to better connect with you and better understand your position. I will definitely take the advice from this chapter and try to express myself more in my academic writing. J J J J That means I can try to make my writing more fun!

Potential Interview Questions:

1.         Where do you get the information to support the claims on your brochures?

2.         Who created your logo?

3.         Do you change the format of your texts based on who you are talk/connect with? I.e. co-worker, boss, or clients you are reaching out to?

4.         Who is your primary audience that you want to speak to?

5.         What do you want your viewers to connect with most in your flyers/brochures?

6.         Do you feel like the language is easily comprehendible to a person who is not well versed in this topic?

7.         What is the goal/message of the flyers and brochures you handout?

8.         Do you feel like there is ever too much information on one page for your clients to grasp? Do you think they skim over it and not fully comprehend all of the information?

9.         What do you think is symbolic in regards to your program name “every woman counts”?

10.      Do you feel like the writing style of your webpage draws clients in?

11.   Do you change your writing style depending on who you are reaching out to?

12.   Do you have any advice for a writing student?

13.   How do you feel your program demonstrates though its writing style that it is credible?

14. Do you feel like your own personal writing style ever shines through in your writing?

So many questions.....

Everything’s an Argument: Chapter 6 & 17

I enjoyed the readings this week. I feel like they were both helpful when I was trying to compose my article analysis for the artifacts that I received from the person I contacted. The point that I gained most from the reading is that everything is a claim. This to me means that any piece of writing artifacts can be evidence for what the document is trying to persuade. The documents that I received made me think about the assigned readings because it made me think that whatever is written can support a claim. There are countless different claims that can be made, it is up to the organization or person as to what argument and claim they are trying to state. If an organization doesn’t have a strong claim then people who are trying to learn more about it might be unsure as to what they are trying to promote or support.

The second reading is all about finding evidence, whether that be a scholarly article, Google, surveys, or personal observations, there is always a way to gather data and display your evidence. Being able to incorporate evidence into artifacts is very important. For example the program I chose to reach out compiled all of their research and put information on flyers so they could better educate the population with the facts that they have found. Being able to find evidence and share it with the community is important, but it has to be the right and true evidence, not false. It is always important to be able to support the evidence you found and create a document that can positively support the claim you are making. It is also very important to keep the interview/questions that are being asked to be easily understood. When researching/finding evidence questions need to be clear so search engine as well as readers to understand what is being asked. 

Both of these reading were helpful to me when I was reading through the artifacts that were given to me. It made me take a step back and look further into the information that was being presented (positive or negative) and analyze how their research/data was compiled and presented.