English 207-001
Health Science Writing
Instr: Walczyk, Nancy
Office: CRT 502; 229-3302
e-mail: nwalczyk@uwm.edu
Office hours: TBA
Course Information: TR; 9:30-10:45am; CRT 127
Course Description
Health Science Writing is taught under the rubric of Business, Technical, and Professional 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 professional writing skills, in particular 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.
Students will gain practice in applying general business and technical writing principles to writing assignments in the health fields. Assignments include writing letters, internal memos, reports, instructions, patient information brochures, a literature review on an ethical issue, and one argumentative research paper on a current health issue. Most course 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, edited, American English
- To learn the principles of modern business and technical writing and to apply these principles to the health science professions
- To be able to address a number of different audiences appropriately
- To design documents appropriate to their function
- To become familiar with publications and issues in health science professions
- To develop a good research technique and to apply APA style requirements to your research
Required Text:
The Business Writer's Handbook, 6th edition.
