Learning-to-Communicate and Communicating-to-Learn in Veterinary Medicine: A Survey of Writing, Speaking, and Reading in Veterinary Medical Curricula    

This article reports the results of a survey of thirty-one colleges of veterinary medicine in the United States and Canada to identify common writing, speaking, and reading tasks performed by veterinary medical students and practicing veterinarians. From the twenty-seven colleges that responded (87% response rate), we learned that writing, speaking, and reading tasks are assigned in almost every veterinary medical course and that the communication tasks assigned in veterinary medical courses accord well with the communication tasks expected to be performed by practicing veterinarians. Along with these learning-to-communicate tasks, veterinary medical students are also assigned communicating-to-learn tasks. Unlike many of the writing-to-learn tasks associated with writing-across-the-curriculum programs, communicating-to- learn tasks in veterinary medical courses seem concerned with teaching students to think like veterinary medical practitioners. The emphasis on communication in veterinary medical curricula is probably due to some extent to the emphasis on problem-based learning, a curricular innovation popular in veterinary medical education. Problem-based learning requires that instruction be designed around cases or problems to be solved rather than topics or information to be covered. This merging of research and practice in the education of veterinary medical students may offer lessons for the education of professional practitioners in technical communication.

Thompson, Isabelle and Charles M. Hendrix. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2000). Articles>Scientific Communication>Biomedical>Veterinary

Look Who's Talking: Teaching and Learning Using the Genre of Medical Case Presentations    

In a pediatric teaching hospital, the authors examined 16 novice medical case presentations that were classified as instances of a hybrid apprenticeship genre. In contrast to strict school and workplace genres, an apprenticeship genre results from the sometimes competing activity systems of student education and patient care. The authors examined these novice case presentations for the amount and patterns of time devoted to student learning and expert teaching, the difficulties created for participants, the sometimes misunderstood implicit messages delivered by experts, and the opportunities to address educational objectives. This study offers professional communication researchers a model that combines quantitative and qualitative methodologies to assess the effects of competing activity systems in the development of communication expertise.

Spafford, M.M., Schryer, C. F., Mian, M. and Lingard, L. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2006). Articles>Scientific Communication>Biomedical>Case Studies

Making Disability Visible: How Disability Studies Might Transform the Medical and Science Writing Classroom      

This article describes how disability studies can be used in a medical and science writing class to critically examine the assumptions of scientific discourse.  An emerging, interdisciplinary field, disability studies draws on feminist, postmodern, and post-colonial theory and extends their critiques to the medicalization of disability.  Deconstructing the medical model of disability helps students understand how science is socially constructed.  After conceptualizing disability studies, this essay discusses sample disability-related classroom activities, readings, and writing assignments.

Wilson, James C. Technical Communication Quarterly (2000). Articles>Education>Scientific Communication>Biomedical

Making the Rules: A Day in the Life of a Regulatory Drafter

David Spicer, Senior Regulatory Drafting Officer with the CFIA, discusses the regulatory drafting process, writing complex texts in the context of federal plain language principles, and what it’s like to write the words that define and protect Canadians.

Boucher, Lorie. Writer's Block (2003). Articles>Scientific Communication>Biomedical

The Median Isn't the Message

Many people make an unfortunate and invalid separation between heart and mind, or feeling and intellect. In some contemporary traditions, abetted by attitudes stereotypically centered on Southern California, feelings are exalted as more "real" and the only proper basis for action -- if it feels good, do it -- while intellect gets short shrift as a hang-up of outmoded elitism.

Gould, Stephen Jay. Edward Tufte. Articles>Scientific Communication>Statistics>Biomedical

Medical Communications

In order to promote the results of their medical research to other healthcare professionals, researchers must publish their work. This is usually done by publishing manuscripts in medical journals and by presenting papers and posters at conferences. Medical writers may write these documents on behalf of the researchers that carried out the studies. This is termed ghostwriting. This is most common when studies are sponsored by pharmaceutical companies, but academic researchers sometimes also use the services of medical writers. The medical writer and researchers collaborate to determine what should be written and the researchers gain from the expert writing skills of the medical writer.

Dianthus. Articles>Scientific Communication>Biomedical

Medical Technical Writing  

In a multibillion-dollar-per-yearcindustry, medical technical writers are well situated between companies that manufacture drugs and medical equipment and the federal government, which regulates the manufacture of drugs and medical equipment. The government requires that these companies produce specific types of documents, which must be of a very high standard. This situation creates lucrative opportunities for technical writers.

English, Wayne A. Intercom (2003). Articles>Scientific Communication>Biomedical>Technical Writing

The Missing Metaphor    

To determine the metaphor that represents cloning, a contemporary scientific revolution, this study examines articles published in Nature, Nature Biotechnology, Science, and Time that describe the cloning of the sheep Dolly. A plethora of figurative language may be garnered from these articles, and this study describes a number of them: metaphor (dead, natural, and technical), simile, hyperbole, personification, irony, cliché, paronomasia, antithesis, metonymy, anthimera, oxymoron, the rhetorical question, and analogy. The significance and relationship to cloning are explicated. The article concludes that the figures do not support a central metaphor. Further research is suggested to determine if the lack of a metaphor is a fluke or a trend in the development of scientific research and what the difference may be between scientific and technical metaphor.

Giles, Timothy D. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2001). Articles>Scientific Communication>Biomedical>Tropes

Multimodal Analysis: An Integrative Approach for Scientific Visualizing on the Web    

The Multimodal approach offers technical communicators and science writers an analytical tool to synthesize the meaning made in the connections across communicative modes. This multimodal synthesis can help technical communicators better exploit the meaning-making potential of multimodal combinations and understand the needs of future generations shaped by their increasingly developed multimodal literacy.

Maier, Carmen Daniela, Constance Kampf and Peter Kastberg. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2007). Articles>Scientific Communication>Technical Illustration>Biomedical

Narrative Medicine: A Model for Empathy, Reflection, Profession, and Trust  

The effective practice of medicine requires narrative competence, that is, the ability to acknowledge, absorb, interpret, and act on the stories and plights of others. Medicine practiced with narrative competence, called narrative medicine, is proposed as a model for humane and effective medical practice. Adopting methods such as close reading of literature and reflective writing allows narrative medicine to examine and illuminate 4 of medicine's central narrative situations: physician and patient, physician and self, physician and colleagues, and physicians and society. With narrative competence, physicians can reach and join their patients in illness, recognize their own personal journeys through medicine, acknowledge kinship with and duties toward other health care professionals, and inaugurate consequential discourse with the public about health care. By bridging the divides that separate physicians from patients, themselves, colleagues, and society, narrative medicine offers fresh opportunities for respectful, empathic, and nourishing medical care.

Charon, Rita. JAMA (2001). Articles>Scientific Communication>Biomedical

The Non-Fiction Novel as Psychiatric Casebook: Truman Capote's In Cold Blood    

As proposed in the classic work by Hervey Cleckley, M.D.--The Mask of Sanity--a psychopath typically meets sixteen diagnostic criteria. Every one of them applies to Richard Hickock as he is revealed by Truman Capote's <em>In Cold Blood</em>, a nonfiction novel about the murder of Kansas farmer Herbert W. Clutter and his family forty years ago. It transcends the boundaries of traditional journalism by closely examining the entire constellation of antisocial personality traits that Hickock exhibits. Drawn in large part from jailhouse interviews, Capote's portrait of Hickock breathes life into the psychiatric literature, thus rendering intelligible the mental evaluation provided by the physician who examined the accused in preparation for his upcoming trial. In so doing, Capote s best-selling masterpiece serves as a case study of a psychopath, one that conforms to established medical authority while maintaining its popular appeal.

Koski, Cherly A. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (1999). Articles>Scientific Communication>Biomedical

Patients, Medicines, and Information  

Van der Waarde summarizes the reasons why medicinal information provided to patients is often confusing and describes a method for evaluating its effectiveness.

van der Waarde, Karel. Intercom (2004). Articles>TC>Biomedical>Scientific Communication

Rational Management: Medical Authority and Ideological Conflict in Ruth Lawrence's Breastfeeding: A Guide for the Medical Profession      

This article presents a close reading of one chapter of the only guidebook written for physicians about the clinical management of breastfeeding. The medical discussion of the psychological aspects of breastfeeding articulates conflicting ideological views of women and their place in society, demonstrating how medicine reflects and contributes to a cultural context that is ambivalent about women's changing roles and the transformation of their practices as mothers. At stake is medicine's role in regulating maternal behavior.

Hausman, Bernice L. Technical Communication Quarterly (2000). Articles>Scientific Communication>Biomedical

The Rhetoric Of Promoting Health    

This article uses Chaim Perelman's theories of argumentation to examine a recent Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, Promoting Health: Intervention Strategies from Social and Behavioral Research (2000). The IOM's text explores social and behavioral research to devise multipronged intervention strategies; it focuses on social, economic, behavioral, and political health as a means of assuring population health--and thereby expands the conventional boundaries of public health. Since Chaim Perelman's rhetoric is seldom applied in the field of health communication, employing his ideas to consider the role of style, arrangement, and argument in such a cutting-edge document can illuminate public health writing, as well as shed new light on Perelmanian rhetoric.

Hamilton, Margaret. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2002). Articles>Scientific Communication>Biomedical>Rhetoric

Seeing Cells: Teaching the Visual/Verbal Rhetoric of Biology    

This pilot study obtained baseline information on verbal and visual rhetorics to teach microscopy techniques to college biology majors. We presented cell images to students in cell biology and biology writing classes and then asked them to identify textual, verbal, and visual cues that support microscopy learning. Survey responses suggest that these students recognized some of the rhetorical strategies used and conflated others, revealing intriguing questions for further research in undergraduate microscopy education.

Dinolfo, John, Barbara Heifferon and Lesly A. Temesvari. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2007). Articles>Scientific Communication>Biomedical>Visual Rhetoric

Teaching Students to Design Information About Difficult Subjects: Public Information About Pediatric AIDS  

Advanced technical communication students analyzed information about pediatric AIDS that was designed for dtrerent segments of the public. They then produced individual projects for local segments of the university and surrounding community. Through this assignment, students learned the importance of community standards in designing accurate and locally 'acceptable' communication about a difficult subject.

Porter, Lynnette R. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Education>Scientific Communication>Biomedical

Teaching Technical Writing to University Students Using the Medical Report  

Technical and medical writing share many similar properties. Using a medical report assignment, in which students research and write about a physical or mental disease, is an effective tool that introduces the principles of technical writing. The assignment for lower division students is to write in the IMRAD format, while upper division students compose a report integrating multiple sources cited in CBE documentation style. In each case, adhering to fact-based, clear, audience-appropriate language in a technical format provides the student with valuable practice writing in this important genre.

Mizrahi, Janet. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>Scientific Communication>Biomedical

Technical Communication and Clinical Health Care: Improving Rural Emergency Trauma Care Through Synchronous Videoconferencing    

While debates continue over the effectiveness of innovative communication technologies to bring information and services to populations that have been underserved by such new technologies, a federally-funded program at the University of Vermont and Fletcher Allen Health Care (FAHC), Burlington, Vermont, has enabled trauma specialists to link with rural emergency room health care providers through a synchronous videoconferencing (telemedicine) network. Analysis of patient histories and surveys completed by the participating physicians after each use of the computer conferencing system as well as interviews and observations indicate that the FAHC consulting trauma specialists and the remotely located physicians felt the linkups do not interfere with standard ER procedures, that communication was at least adequate for all consultations, and that the consults improved the quality of care, for over half of the cases. Furthermore, interviews with rural ER physicians indicated that they saw the program operating as the first stage of FAHC's management of a patient to be transferred to that facility.

Doheny-Farina, Stephen, Peter W. Callas, Michael A. Ricci, Michael P. Caputo, Judith L. Amour and Fred B. Rogers. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2003). Articles>Scientific Communication>Videoconferencing>Biomedical

Technical Communication and the Role of the Public Intellectual: A Community HIV-Prevention Case Study    

This article argues that technical communicators are uniquely poised to function as public intellectuals. To demonstrate this point, the author offers the example of her work on a major AIDS prevention program report. Situating this work within the history of technical communication, the current discussion of rhetorics of risk, and the writing classroom, the author argues that technical writers don't have simply the opportunity to engage in textual activism; in many cases they have no alternative.

Bowdon, Melody. Technical Communication Quarterly (2004). Articles>Scientific Communication>Biomedical>Case Studies

Use of Race and Ethnicity in Biomedical Publication

Researchers, clinicians, and policy makers face 3 challenges in writing about race and ethnicity: accounting for the limitations of race/ethnicity data; distinguishing between race/ethnicity as a risk factor or as a risk marker; and finding a way to write about race/ethnicity that does not stigmatize and does not imply a we/they dichotomy between health professionals and populations of color. Josurnals play an important role in setting standards for research and policy literature. The authors outline guidelines that might be used when race and ethnicity are addressed in biomedical publications.

Kaplan, Judith B. and Trude Bennett. JAMA (2003). Articles>Scientific Communication>Biomedical>Ethnicity

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>Scientific Communication>Biomedical>Visual Rhetoric

Visual Information about Medicines for Patients

In Europe, when someone gets ill, it is common to visit a doctor. Most consultations end when a doctor prescribes a medicine that can be obtained from a pharmacy. After collecting the medicine a patient has to decide if the use of this medicine is more beneficial than not taking it. In order to make this decision, and in order to take medicines effectively, information is essential. Not only the instructions about how much to take and at what times, but also the potential risks caused by interactions with other medicines and common behaviour (eating, smoking, drinking, sleeping, exercising). It also becomes necessary to know how to recognize that a medicine does what it supposes to do. Historical developments have led to a tightly regulated situation in which the patient gets a clear message that health care providers (pharmaceutical industry, pharmacists, prescribers, etc) do not care very much about informed patients.

van der Waarde, Karel. University of Alberta (2003). Articles>Communication>Scientific Communication>Biomedical

Writing Across the Chemistry Curriculum  

While chemistry faculty agree that writing is an important professional skill, few know how to teach it. They lack a strategy for incorporating writing into their courses, skill in designing eflective writing assignments, and knowledge of evaluation methods. Our practical manual, funded by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation and the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Tennessee Knoxville, will provide chemistry and other science faculty with these skills along with a set of ready-to-use assignments for their courses. The manual will allow chemistry faculty to teach writing purposefully and effectively, focusing on the scientific content while systematically developing this all-important skill.

Kovac, Jeffrey and Donna Walter Sherwood. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Education>Scientific Communication>Biomedical

Writing Technical Documents for the Global Pharmaceutical Industry      

Technical writers in the global pharmaceutical industry write for two major audiences: regulatory agencies and healthcare practitioners. These audiences differ in their information needs and expectations. Therefore, information products that address these audiences must balance the competing forces of business interests, market penetration, and the cultural variables of products so tied to people's beliefs. Pharmaceutical writers may carry an extra burden because the topics of their documents have such a potential for social benefit or serious harm. Electronic technology can greatly enhancing writers' abilities to meet these document needs, but system incompatibilities must first be overcome. Audience analysis still remains the key to crafting effective pharmaceutical documents.

Bonk, Robert J. Technical Communication Quarterly (1998). Articles>Scientific Communication>Biomedical

The Use of Electronic Mail in Biomedical Communication    

Publication in general medical journals stimulates more conventional than electronic mail. However, the content of e-mail may be of greater scientific relevance. Electronic mail can be encouraged without fear of diminishing the quality of the communications received.

Costello, Richard, Anthony Shaw, Roz Cheetham and Robert J. Moots. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (2000). Articles>Scientific Communication>Biomedical>Email