Improving Medical Treatment Procedures  

Technical writers should be alert for opportunities to improve documentation in one technical field by using appropriate techniques from other fields. In this paper, the author presents ways of improving medical treatment procedures by using elements from engineering procedures, including introductions, safety sections, warnings, conditional (branching) statements, and notes.

Gibbs, Judith M. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Documentation>Biomedical>Policies and Procedures

The New World of Product Labeling: Alternative Architectures and Approaches  

A discussion of the shift to structured content in pharmaceutical product labeling, which builds upon SPL and PIM regulations and the fundamental concepts of enterprise content management.

Glemser Technologies (2005). Articles>Content Management>Documentation>Biomedical

Online Reference: The Ultimate in User-Friendly Documentation  

This teaching hospital in Texas has successfully implemented an online reference system that allows access to nearly 14,000 employees in more than 20 cities. A cross-functional project team was formed to address the needfor immediate access to current policies and procedures across the entire enterprise. This team researched, developed, and implemented an effective and successful system that was also easy to learn and use.

Richardson, Verna. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Documentation>Biomedical>Online

Turbulent Times in Health Care: Creating a Flexible Document Management System  

Imparting knowledge effectively both internally and externally is a challenge for any company. Within the health care industry, communication is further challenged as scientific and technological advancement, increased consumer expectations, and the initiation of health care reform keep the industry and knowledge within health care organizations in a flux. To communicate effectively to external customers, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Iowa has created a group of internal documents to manage the information necessary to create the documents customers receive. These internaI documents integrate the basics of information design and technical communication, color, styles, consistent structure, document relatedness, and a flexible document management system to make the creation of benefits policies (the external documents) better, faster, and cheaper.

Weiner, Carla A. and Michelle Loefer. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Documentation>Biomedical

Usability Testing of Medical Instrument Instruction Manuals  

This panel will discuss usability analysis, user testing, and revision of a medical instruments manual. The study showed that a hidden audience constituted the real users of the manual and that that audience served as an unintended intermediary between the writers of the manual and the users of the instruments. Usability testing showed the merits of a design for the manual that served both the intended and unintended audiences.

Beckmann, Christopher P., Nancy L. Bayer, and Robert Krull. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Documentation>Biomedical>Usability

Seeing and Listening: A Visual and Social Analysis of Optometric Record-Keeping Practices  

This article investigates the contribution visual rhetoric and rhetorical genre studies (RGS) can make to health care education and communication genres. Through a visual rhetorical analysis of a patient record used in an optometry teaching clinic, this article illustrates that a genre's visual representations provide significant insights into the social action of that genre. These insights are deepened by an insider analysis of the patient record that highlights how content analyses of visual designs need to be elaborated by contextual considerations. A combined visual rhetoric and RGS analysis shows that clinical novices learn to interpret the record's visual cues to safely traverse the complex requirements of this apprenticeship genre. The article demonstrates that visual rhetoric research can meaningfully contribute to the understanding of genres by presenting an enriched contextual analysis achieved by consulting with context insiders.

Varpio, Lara, Marlee M. Spafford, Catherine F. Schryer and Lorelei Lingard. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2007). Articles>Documentation>Biomedical>History