Nurses practice in a wide variety of setting and possess unique knowledge and abilities. Sharing knowledge and experience through written communication or publication require writing skills. Publication may be an expectation internal to one’s organization or external to sharing knowledge through scholarly journals. Shatzer, Wolf, and Hravnak (2010) discussed the value of encouraging publication by staff nurses to disseminate information on clinical nursing and promote professional development. One of the barriers to staff nurses pursuing publication was a lack of understanding of the writing process and lack of confidence in professional writing (p. 392-397)
Public health professionals must master writing competencies essential to their profession including preparation of resumes, grant writing, portfolio development and effective written communication. A report conducted by the National Commission on Writing for America's Families, Schools and College provided the findings from 120 human resource directors of the large American Corporations on the importance of workplace writing. Results include;
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Writing is a threshold skill for employment and promotion
Those who cannot write and communicate clearly will not be hired and are not likely to last long enough to be promoted
Most salaried workers have some writing responsibilities
One respondent stated “you can’t move up without writing skills (Liller & Liller, 2007, p. 1-2).
The authors concluded by placing the onus on educational institutions to ensure graduates have the competencies for effective communication including professional writing.
Readers form impressions and make judgement based on writing skills. Providing poor writing to employers may give the employer the impression that the person is sloppy or unintelligent. If a person's job is to be an advocate and persuade others through providing crucial documents and their writing is poor, the documentation appears untrustworthy or invalid. Punctuation errors, syntax errors, typing errors and poorly worded sentences show a lack of intelligence or disregard for the subject and the reader. "Good writing conveys intelligence, thoughtfulness, diligence accuracy and respect (Sudder, 2010, p. 19)
Fabian (2001) also spoke to impressions and judgment based on writing skills and felt that how a person communicates has the most to do with how they will be perceived. Poor writing can be a missed opportunity. Poorly written resumes, presentations, emails, letters and other written communication stop the reader from focusing on the message as they form opinions of the writer as careless or not serious. A person cannot be productive at work or profession with poor writing skills (p. 70-74).
Overall, the literature speaks to the importance of writing skills in conveying professionalism and intelligence. Obtaining and maintaining employment requires written communication. To advocate for and persuade others, one must master the competency of effective written communication. Effective written communication is as important as other skills taught in nursing schools. Students should be provided with tools to increase scholarly writing skills and electronic communication (Roberts & Gross, 2009, p. 262-265).
References
Fabian, N. (2001). Importance of Writing Well. Journal of Environment Health, 64 (7), 70-74.
Liller, K.D. & Liller, D.A. (2007). Practicing Public Health: The Important Role of Professional Writing. Journal of Public Health Management Practice, 13(1), 1-2
Roberts S.T., & Goss. G. (2009). Use of an Online Writing Tutorial to Improve Writing Skills in Nursing Courses. Nurse Educator, 34(6), 262- 265
Shatzer, M., Wolf. G.A., Hravnak, M. (2010). A Curriculum Designed to Reduce Barriers related to Scholarly Writing by Staff Nurse. Journal of Nursing Administration, 40(9), 392-397
Sudder. C. R. (2010). Why You Should Care About Writing Well. Student Lawyer, 38(9), 19
