Writing in Nursing: Examples
One of the most significant challenges for students majoring in nursing and for faculty teaching nursing courses is the broad range of effective writing that nursing requires as a profession. The writing experiences that students have in English composition classes begin to prepare nursing majors for some of their responsibilities, like research writing, writing to learn, case studies, and official correspondence (letters, memos, etc.), and these experiences are continued and expanded in nursing classes, where students also write scholarly papers and give oral presentations. However, nurses also have to write effectively using short and accurate phrases with advanced medical terminology; the sample documents below illustrate this sort of writing. It is, to say the least, very challenging for nursing students to learn to write effectively in so many ways and for nursing faculty to design effective writing activities that provide effective training for such students.
We provide specific examples of various modes of writing required in both nursing classes and in the nursing workplace to provide readers a sense of its characteristics. These files are page-by-page JPG images so as to preserve the original formatting.
Nursing Process
Clinical Log and Excerpts from Health History
Any identifying information -- names, hospitals and other medical care facilities, etc. -- has been removed from the examples; grading comments are also not included.
