Topic Proposal

My topic proposal:   Why is abortion such a controversial issue?

I choose this topic, because abortion is one of the biggest topics/issues in the United States today. I think it will provide a lot of sources and information for the topic. My four sources are:

-http://prochoice.org/education-and-advocacy/about-abortion/abortion-facts/

-http://time.com/4154084/anti-abortion-pre-roe/

-http://americamagazine.org/issue/feminist-case-against-abortion

-https://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html?gclid=Cj0KEQiAxrW2BRCFidKbqKyq1YEBEiQAnMDWxpOAP6JQGIfRiVjh89uQlRVO-CKUNC15-FeHSs_ESO4aArR28P8HAQ

Exercise 2

I choose to use my essay in my Introduction to Literature I wrote last semester for my quote analysis. In the essay I would bring in specific quotes from a poem read in class to come up with an arguable and significant claim about technology and its influence/roll of a given community.

 The first quote I have chosen is, "Thy black cylindric body, golden brass and silvery steel, Thy ponderous sidebars, parallel and connecting rods, gryating, shuttling at thy sides." I used this quote to to get my point across that the poet is showing that locomotives are becoming a growing competition and are made indestructible. I brought this quote in after I described what the poet's thoughts were on trains and then explained what the poet wanted the reader to think at the end.

The second quote I used was, "Thy train of cars behind, obedient, merrily following, Through gale or calm, now swift, now slack, yet steadily careering." I used this quote to explain the idea the poet gives on the journeys trains take, that life is circled around transporting people and goods continuously. I said my thoughts first and then brought the quote in to further get my point across. After the quote, I said my opinion on what the poet was referring to and how trains were used back in the 1800's when this specific poem was published.

In the essay I made sure each quote I used to build an arguable thesis was connected to my opinions and made sense to the reader. A lot of my essay had to do with quoting and 'The Art of Quoting' helped me see how I can quote better to bring in a stronger stance in my papers later on.

Peer Review Evaluation

I found the peer review very useful. My peers were very specific on what I needed to fix in my paper. It helped me see things that could use improvement that I didn't at first. There wasn't anything I disliked about it. The reviews were also better to have on the blog under my first draft, so I could be able to look back at them and then see where specifically the review was talking about in the paper.

I was very happy we were able to have a conference with the instructor. This helped me get a better idea on what I should have in my paper. I found it extremely helpful to learn how to format my paper correctly during the conference and get the paper emailed back to me after it was fixed. I also found the side comments helped give good feedback on areas in my paper I needed to change. Overall, I found this to be the best way for me to fix my mistakes correctly and to learn how to create a well written paper. The only thing I disliked was the conflicting time schedule with other student's conferences and my own.

First Paper Rough Draft

Writing as a Nurse Practitioner

            A nurse practitioner is an advanced registered practice nurse. This is “one step up” from a regular registered nurse, given the two extra years of graduate school taken to become a nurse practitioner. The difference in registered nurses and nurse practitioners are very big (Exploring Health Careers). Nurse practitioners are able to build their own practice, diagnose and treat common illness, prescribe medication and therapies, provide immunization, perform physical exams, order labs, analyze lab results, authorize treatments and much more that a registered nurse isn’t authorized to do (Nurse Practitioner).

In the field of nursing, writing is something done daily. Many writings for nurses include non-academic charting, case studies, and care plans. For nurse practitioners, this is not the case. Nurse practitioners do write non-academic charts, notes, and emails to patients, but they also make legal documents for patients, and write academic articles and journals on their practices (Research, 2012).

Non-Academic Writing

            I interviewed Jodi Best, a nurse practitioner who has gotten her BSN, MSN, Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP), and Family Psychiatric/Mental Health Nurse Practitioner. Nurse practitioners have a lot more writing and examining to do on their patients, than a nurse does. For example, when asked how after Jodi writes in a day, she explains:

“About 30-40% of my day.  I am always checking email throughout the day and answering it.  I see patients at different locations every day, and then I do a report /progress note on each patient.  They are longer then a basic note that a provider would write about a patient at the doctor office, for something like a sore throat.  If it’s the first time I see them it is a full Psychiatric evaluation, which often can be 4 pages long.”

            There are different types of nurse practitioners, such as pediatric, women’s health care, acute care, neonatal, adult, and family nurse practitioners. Jodi is a family nurse practitioner, so she mainly sees and treats children. Some of the non-academic writing she does for her adolescent patients include “letters to teachers, schools when I feel they need more help or specific accommodations for anxiety, ADHD, etc. during their school day. I am on a few committees here at work so have to write documents at times for those.”

            Another common way nurse practitioners and nurses use non-academic writing, is the progress note. This is an accurate and unbiased document of the patient’s medical history and newly found symptoms for diagnosis. When asking Jodi about this, she referred to it as a SOAP note.

 “S-subjective –what the patient tells me about their symptoms, response to medications I am prescribing, etc.   O-my objective observations such as vital signs, and a mental status exam.  On occasion I do a physical exam for inpatient crisis unit.  A-Assessment- what I see as the provider and I include the patient’s prognosis at that appointment.  P-plan- medications, recommendations for therapy or other services, community resources, and LOTS of patient education that I document I have done.”

            Evaluations are another form of non-academic writing that need to be carefully documented. This means documenting the patient’s symptoms, context of the symptoms, how long they have had them, and if the patient meets the criteria for a certain diagnosis. These evaluations are very important in the medical field and must be written carefully and precisely (Carryer, 2007).

Academic Writing

            There are many academic writings in the nurse practitioner field. One of the main topics in research articles by nurse practitioners and doctors right now is if nurse practitioners and physicians are becoming a growing competition towards each other.

“Across the country, nurse practitioners and family physicians work together in practices where their skills complement each other. At the same time, some doctors argue that, without ready access to supervising physicians, nurse practitioners are likely to order more tests and consultations and be quicker to admit patients to the hospital, thereby driving up health care costs.” (Flanagan, 1998)

            A randomized trial between August 1995 and October 1997 compared this thesis by sending patients to a nurse practitioner or physician to see whether care given by either was superior and more cost efficient. This included charts, prescriptions given, and outcomes patients had throughout. The research article concluded that only hypertension in patients given care by a nurse practitioner were rather lower than a physician’s (Mundinger, 2000).

            When asking Jodi her hardest academic writing she has had to do during her time as a nurse practitioner, she began to explain her work on a template for a patient being diagnosed in order to come up with a plan of care. “The template includes many of the different areas that must be documented for legal purposes or billing purposes so it helps all of us be very complete on our documentation.  I had each of the other providers look at them and agree with it before we put them into practice.”

Conclusion

            Being in the medical field requires a lot of writing every day, whether it be charting exact observations and emailing updates on patient care, to researching and writing academic research articles on medicine. Learning to write in a professional manner is so important in communication with other medical staff or providers. It is extremely important to be able to write concisely and accurately

Being able to articulate what you want to say to others or what they need to know is vital as a professional.  Especially in nursing field, when they often are documenting patient information.  But also as a team player in a hospital or clinic setting, communication skills via writing are a must.

Interview Summary and Source Analysis

I interviewed a nurse practitioner named Jodi, who is also a graduate student. Because my major is nursing, I felt that this would be a good source. Being a graduate student means having to write a lot of papers, which helped greatly in my interviewing questions. I started off by asking Jodi how long she has worked in her profession and where her current job is to get to know her better for myself and the reader. I then began to ask how much she writes in a day and what types of genres she uses to do so. More importantly, I asked what the most common genre of writing she uses is, who she writes for, and who sees it. Lastly, I concluded with asking how being a graduate student and having to write a lot helped her to how she writes for her job to this day. Jodi gave me greatly detailed answers to the questions I had for her, which helped me to better understand the writing position a nurse practitioner has. She included humor in her descriptions and good examples of some of the papers she has had to write throughout the years in graduate school. Another thing Jodi told me in the interview was what not to do while writing emails, papers, etc. for her job and for common situations that do not involve being a nurse practitioner. After the interview I felt like I had a good deal of information on the subject for me to start my paper. Jodi has helped me see that being a nurse practitioner, or even a nurse, means that everyday involves some form of writing to communicate with others. There is always a certain genre on how to do it in the many different situations nursing majors have to go through in order to get their degree and to do well in their job.

My first source is a scholarly article by multiple doctors called "Primary Care Outcomes in Patients by Nurse Practitioners or Physicians". This article compares the work a nurse practitioner does to a physician. I figured this would be a good article to use as a source, because both jobs have major writing requirements. The second source I have chosen is a nonacademic article titled "Nurse Practitioners: Growing Competition for Family Physicians?". I chose this article, because it shows bias from the author, but gives good examples on what a nurse practitioner's job is. The third source I have is an academic journal called "What's an NP?", which gives description of some tasks a nurse practitioner has to do daily. These sources give me a good idea on exactly what a nurse practitioner is, what kind of writing tasks they have, and how often they are writing per day. With these sources and interview, I will be able to explain in my paper what the assignment is asking for.