[NPInfo] Grammar

[David or Diane Dito]

Okay, I couldn't resist chiming in here, too. As clinical faculty for
master's level students, I was appalled that one-third to one-half could not
spell or structure sentences clearly. I included feedback on their papers
about spelling and grammatical errors, because the ability to speak and use
the English language properly is a matter of professionalism.

Of course this problem is not unique to our profession. However, the ability
to document--and document well--is very important in the health care arena
not only for facilitating clear communication among all members of the
health care team, but also for medico-legal reasons. Being human, though, we
all make errors. My most embarrassing error occurred after interviewing a
nationally known motivational speaker and writer who bemoaned the
"dumbing-down" of America by allowing substandard work and performance. I
inadvertently misspelled a word--this was in the days before spell
check--that my editor missed, too. The speaker circled the word in red,
wrote "Exactly my point," and sent the article back to the chief editor, who
then propped it up on my desk for the entire newsroom to see.

Does it matter here and in other informal settings? Perhaps not. However, I
personally would welcome the feedback if someone were kind enough to point
out in a polite and constructive manner that I made persistent grammatical
or spelling errors. I think we generally all agree that we learn a lot from
these list serves. After all, learning DOES occur both formally and
informally.

Diane Dito, NP

-----Original Message-----
From: npinfo-bounces at nurse.net [mailto:npinfo-bounces at nurse.net] On Behalf
Of Margienp at aol.com
Sent: Friday, February 01, 2008 7:23 AM
To: npinfo at nurse.net; np-clinical at nurse.net; acc-circle at listserve.com
Subject: Re: [NPInfo] Grammar

 
 

Hello all,
 
I agree with the poster below.
I am a Director, at a large health care co., and I am appalled at a select  
group of Master Prepared Nurses, writing skills.
Have a great day.
Margie
In a message dated 1/31/2008 6:24:51 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
lindamarie76 at msn.com writes:

I'm  going to chime in here with my two cents. As some of you know,  I
occasionally send private e-mails to posters who use incorrect grammar.  My
biggest pet peeve is the incorrect use of apostrophes. Unfortunately, I  am
seeing this more and more frequently (advertisements, CNN, Fox News,  etc.).
However, one place I never see it is in medical journals,  physicians'
letters, Peg Fitzgerald's documents, etc.



I was  a Teachers' Assistant for the baccalaureate nursing program at
Florida
Atlantic University. The students had to submit a journal every  week. I
never saw such horrible writing. If I could have failed students  for
writing
I would have. I sent many students to the Writing Center on  campus for help
with basic sentence structure and punctuation use. At the  end of the
semester I explained my rationales to the students and it  sounded very
similar to this. . . . 



"If NPs and PAs want  the public, drug companies, AMA, collaborating
physicians etc. to respect  us and see us for the professionals that we are.
.then we should try to  remember things like spell check, punctuation and
basic writing skills.  After all, what does it say for earning a Master's
Degree if one cannot  even construct a sentence in English. If English is
not
ones native  language, it is even more important to proof-read and make sure
posts are  understandable."





Respectfully,



Linda  Marie

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