English 207-001
Health Science Writing
Instr: Walczyk, Nancy
Office: CRT 502; 229-3302
e-mail: nwalczyk@uwm.edu
Office hours: TBA
Course Information: MW; 12:30-1:45pm; TBA
Course Description
Health Science Writing is taught under the rubric of Business and Technical Writing. It is taken by students enrolled in pre-medicine, pre-pharmacy, nursing, occupational therapy, speech, and related health fields. The goal of the course is to teach students how to communicate clearly and effectively and to prevent misunderstandings that can interfere with good client or patient care. This writing course is designed for students from a variety of health science disciplines; for that reason it does not focus on writing tasks or formats particular to any one medical specialty (such as observation reports) that are better taught within your discipline. Students will gain practice in applying general business and technical writing principles to the health field. Assignments may include writing instructions, policy & procedures statements, letters, internal memos, reports, patient information brochures, a literature review on an ethical issue, and one argumentative research paper on a current health issue. Most business assignments use the case approach, which means that students are given a scenario and a persona and are asked to write a document appropriate to the situation. Prerequisite: Completion of the English composition requirement (a passing score on the English Essay Exam or a grade of C or better in English 112).
Course Objectives:
- To practice writing correctly in standard, modern, edited, American English
- To learn the basics of modern business and technical communications and to apply these principles to creating documents appropriate to the health science professions
- To be able to address a number of different audiences in an appropriate rhetorical strategy
- To design documents appropriate to their functions
- To become familiar with databases, publications, and issues in health science professions
- To develop a good research technique and to document research using the APA style
