Teaching Writing for the Health Professions: Disciplinary Intersections and Pedagogical Practice

ABSTRACT

This article outlines an approach to teaching a Writing for the Health Professions course and situates this approach within the aims of and tensions between the medical humanities, the rhetoric of health and medicine, and disability studies. This analysis provides a pragmatic walkthrough of how assignments in such courses can be linked to programmatic outcomes (with SOAP [Subjective, Objective, Assessment, Plan] note and patient education assignments as extended examples) as well as an interdisciplinary framework for future empirical studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Curriculum
• disability studies
• healthcare writing
• medical humanities
• rhetoric of health and medicine

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Daniel Kenzie

Daniel Kenzie is a visiting assistant professor at North Dakota State University, where he teaches scientific and technical writing. His current research focuses on discourses of traumatic brain injury in scientific research, public dialogue, and survivor experience.

Mary McCall

Mary McCall is an assistant professor at North Dakota State University, where she teaches usability and user experience and technical writing. Her research areas include professional and technical writing, writing across the curriculum, and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, with an emphasis on the intersections between gender and identity development within engineering.