Please forgive me as I'm certain this subject has been broached many times, yet I just can't stop myself from being completely put off and ashamed by some health care providers. When I come across in chart entries, orders, professional blogs... commonly used (simple) words that are misspelled or sentence structure and syntax more in line with a junior high school student, I am immediately embarrassed for the profession and quickly dismiss the author's credibility. Right or wrong, I feel that your spoken and written words are reflections of your intelligence, competence, and overall professionalism. While I get that not everyone possesses this innate ability, for goodness sake, use spell check or Google it if you have to! I don't mean to be harsh, but really?
Wow! I am shocked, my 4th and 5th graders are required to take vocabulary and spelling tests in cursive and it must be written neatly or no credit is given. They are both fairly proficient. And I live in a town with extremely poor schools. I had no idea other kids were not learning cursive!
To the OP, doesn't it make you feel super duper smart to catch other people's mistakes? I bet you are spot on and all the documentation errors are made by utter buffoons who have no business holding a nursing license.
That was uncalled for and completely unprofessional. Why does one year of nursing experience, or less, imply that a wittier response would be available after that time period? Does nursing increase one's sense of humor or sarcasm? If that is the case, then somehow in my many years of experience, I missed the humor courses. I do not have a sense of humor and have never understood sarcasm.
I am a teacher, and was before leaving my career and returning to school to become a nurse. Eventually I returned to the role as an educator at the collegiate level for student nurses. As a didactic nursing instructor, I have learned that textbooks, in general, have gone from 12th and above grade reading level, to the 6th-8th grade reading level. I have not found this to be detrimental to the education of nursing students. On the contrary, I have found that they are able to read and digest the plethora of information that is required, without burnout. Discharge instructions for patients are being written at the 3rd-5th grade levels, to give patients the best opportunity for comprehension, implementation & compliance.
What I have found, over the years, is that some people are able to spell and write with eloquence and affluence. That neither makes them smart or educated, necessarily. I also have had students, colleagues, peers, orientees, etc. who cannot spell or put together a sentence without putting it into a MSWord document prior to pasting it into the chart. This does not make them uneducated or dumb (which is an offensive adjective meaning mute or stupid, by the way). Although, if used informally, dumb is defined to simplify or reduce the intellectual content of something so as to make it accessible to a larger number of people. But I was under the impression that this post was meant to be professional rather than informal. Please excuse the misunderstanding.
I'd like to see better writing and speaking skills from college prepared colleagues. It doesn't reflect well on our profession when we use double negatives, and other grammatical errors associated with the uneducated class.
I just clicked on a thread here on allnurses that was difficult to read simply due to the lack of paragraphs. I just do not understand how people made it through higher education without mastering such a basic part of writing. It makes me wonder about our educational system.
To be entirely fair we must take into account that electronic communications on an internet forum are different with different rules and expectations. Those rules and expectations are typically further adjusted for the tool being used to communicate with whether it is a computer or mobile device.
The lack of paragraphs that we see on this forum can be explained by a lack of familiarity with electronic communication or the use of a mobile device. I will admit that when I post with my phone or iPad formatting can sometimes be a challenge.
I would like to add that familiarity with the English written language or electronic communications is not a good indicator of intelligence, education, or professionalism.
I understand the frustration in some settings. During my MSN program we had to post case studies to an online forum so that we could reply to one another's work. It was really shocking how poorly written many of these posts were. I could never understand it because spelling and grammar checks are programmed into nearly all word processing applications. I don't think it's necessarily education that plays a factor, but carelessness. However, though I feel that these mistakes are inexcusable in academic settings, I think that poor writing in medical documentation is understandable. Sometimes we are just too busy to get it perfectly correct, and if people can understand it is it such a big deal?
Also, I believe it is a bit of a double standard that we think spelling and grammatical errors reflect poorly on the nursing profession as a whole. I have worked with a number of doctors whose handwriting looked like that of a 6-year-old, and they don't seem the least bit "embarrassed for the profession" by it.
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
To be entirely fair we must take into account that electronic communications on an internet forum are different with different rules and expectations. Those rules and expectations are typically further adjusted for the tool being used to communicate with whether it is a computer or mobile device.
The lack of paragraphs that we see on this forum can be explained by a lack of familiarity with electronic communication or the use of a mobile device. I will admit that when I post with my phone or iPad formatting can sometimes be a challenge.
I would like to add that familiarity with the English written language or electronic communications is not a good indicator of intelligence, education, or professionalism.
The lack of paragraphs that we see on this forum are often associated with the youngest posters who grew up with all of the electronics. If I, in my 60s, can learn to use paragraphs while posting on laptop, iPad and iPhone, I find it difficult to comprehend why someone who never lived without all the electronics cannot learn.
But when someone was born in the US or Canada and has a university degree, one should be able to expect basic writing skills. I, too, am embarrassed by a lot of what I see. Not talking about perfection but for heaven's sake at least learn to use paragraphs.
I agree with you, I was speaking in general terms, not specifically in a professional setting.
Please forgive me as I'm certain this subject has been broached many times, yet I just can't stop myself from being completely put off and ashamed by some health care providers. When I come across in chart entries, orders, professional blogs... commonly used (simple) words that are misspelled or sentence structure and syntax more in line with a junior high school student, I am immediately embarrassed for the profession and quickly dismiss the author's credibility. Right or wrong, I feel that your spoken and written words are reflections of your intelligence, competence, and overall professionalism. While I get that not everyone possesses this innate ability, for goodness sake, use spell check or Google it if you have to! I don't mean to be harsh, but really?
OscarTheOwl
113 Posts
Wow! I am shocked, my 4th and 5th graders are required to take vocabulary and spelling tests in cursive and it must be written neatly or no credit is given. They are both fairly proficient. And I live in a town with extremely poor schools. I had no idea other kids were not learning cursive!
To the OP, doesn't it make you feel super duper smart to catch other people's mistakes? I bet you are spot on and all the documentation errors are made by utter buffoons who have no business holding a nursing license.