Nursing Discourse Community: A Comprehensive Guide

Introduction 

I am a nursing student, and I have a clear understanding that nursing as a profession is highly demanding and constitutes numerous unique skills and different medical terms that I have to understand to perfect in the profession. Memorizing every medical term and learning the nursing skills is an exciting challenge am looking forward to being part. This essay is a nursing discourse community report targeting new nurses that are just getting into the profession. In the report, I specifically touch on the nature of the nursing profession and the use of different nursing abbreviations and terms. Before writing this report, I had the opportunity to participate in an open forum for nurses where the head nurse of a local public hospital gave a talk, also had the opportunity to have an interview with her.

Background 

Florence Nightingale first introduced the Nursing profession. Nightingale was born in 1820 in Florence, Italy. Nightingale bore nursing out of her desire to help soldiers who had suffered significant injuries during the Crimean War. She contributed during the war by reducing the number of soldiers' deaths by two-thirds through the provision of healthcare to the fallen soldiers on the battlefields. Florence managed to save many lives during a war for the first time by implementing the sanitization procedures and providing education to new nurses regarding the nursing procedures and their impacts on saving lives. In 1860, she established The Nightingale Training School and St. Thomas Hospital, where nurses trained and moved on to save more lives as part of their careers.

The Nightingale Training School was the very first nursing school of its kind in history where nurses were trained about the profession. Florence contributed to nursing by creating an environment that allowed for the rapid growth of the nursing practices, and today it is a widely established profession practiced all over the world. Today, nurses have the opportunity to work anywhere and everywhere, including schools, hospitals, clinics, and places of work. The nursing profession is standardized and regulated, and as a result, nurses can get their training in any part of the world and at the same time, travel to work in any part of the world to provide their services.

Research and Analysis 

John Swales 6 characteristics of discourse community include (1) a discourse community must have a common public goal, (2) it must have a mechanism of intercommunication amongst its members, (3) it has a participatory approach to give information and feedback, (4) a discourse community has one or more genres in communicating its aims and objectives, (5) it acquires certain lexis and lastly (6) a discourse community has a threshold level of members with discourse expertise and degree of relevant content. The nursing community fits all six characteristics, as described by John Swales. This analysis presents the nursing profession in terms of Swales characteristics of a discourse community:

Common Public Goals 

Every discourse community, is defined by their purpose of existence and by public goal through communicating. There are different responsibilities for a registered nurse, and they vary depending on the health care institution where the nurse works (Roberts,2019) . However, irrespective of the nurse job description and responsibilities at a healthcare institution, the goal of a registered nurse is to provide professional and high-quality patient care and acting as a patient advocate (Whitehead et al., 2014). 

Means of Communication Amongst Members 

Swales, in his six characteristics of a discourse community, highlights that a discourse features a standard form of communication or a means of sharing information. In the nursing practice and most hospitals, emails are the dominant method of communication amongst the staff members. Nurses exchanges email a lot when at work with each other. Information about patient updates, department issues, and changes in shifts are all discussed over the internet via email (Roberts,2019 ) . With email serving as the main means of communication, it does not imply that it is the only method of communication amongst the nurses. Nurses also communicate through phone calls and text messages to talk about changes in the shift, call in sick, or to remind of an urgent issue—telephone is, therefore, also a major method of communication.

Participatory Communication Methods 

A discourse community adopts a participatory method mainly to give information and get feedback. The nursing participatory communication method is through emails and group meetings. The group meetings for the nursing profession are normally guided by the administration staff members like the nurses' manager or the assistant nurse manager. The nurse members normally meet at the start of every shift, called huddles. The nurses cover a lot of issues during these meetings, including learning on the workflow, talking about personal issues, and updates on processes. There are meetings that more technical and specific issues are handling like meeting between a nurse and the hospital management to solve professional and ethical conduct issues, and meetings to address issues related to specific patients' conditions.

Genres 

Swales further provides that a discourse community must always use or possess at least one genre to accomplish its aims communicatively. Genre and materiality in the study of discourse communities, discourse communities, grow through speaking and writing amongst the members, and genres is a primary section of this process. In simple terms, genre refers to a text. Examples of common genres in the nursing profession include drug handbook, hospital discharge papers, peer-reviewed journals, and narratives.

Drug handbook: most nurses in a healthcare facility depends on the drug handbook. The book comes in a dictionary format with different drug products alphabetically listed and cross-referenced band index names. Members refer to drugs that they are no familiar with depending on personal knowledge and expertise. This book is used to enhance medication safety and to improve patient care. 

Hospital discharge papers: the genre is critical because it gives a detailed explanation of what the health facility accomplished for them, including future accomplishments, diagnosis, referrals, and follow-ups. When the patient is ready to be discharged, the conditions are assessed to determine release. 

Peer-reviewed journals : Peer-reviewed journals ensure that published nursing journals provide answers to meaningful research questions. The main advantage of the peer review process is that the articles give a trusted way of scientific communication in a discourse community. 

Narratives: Narrative is one of the most common documentation systems in hospitals. It is a more formal document describing the care given to a patient in their stay in the emergency department. 

Shared Terminology 

One of the primary factors why the nursing community is not like other types of discourse communities is that the nurse's language is integrated within the medical terminology. The nurses' language is critical because if an individual does not understand it, then he or she does not stand a chance of being a member of this group. For example, the nurses working in the emergency department in a hospital uses a list of jargon, abbreviations, and complicated medical terminologies on their daily routines typically. This language is essential as the nurses conduct their studies on a patient, as they record information about a patient, or when having a crucial professional discussion, when instructing the patients, or just when going on with their daily work at the office (Roberts,2019 ) . It is important to note that is no specific list of jargon or abbreviations that nurses are required to use. Still, it is a part of a culture that is passed on from one nurse to another, part of the lessons they learned in class, and part of the language that the senior doctors use to communicate specific information ( Beaufort, 1997 ). On an average day, nurses use an uncountable number of abbreviations and medical terms, including "a-c," which may refer to taking medicine before having a meal, "a to g ratio," which means albumin to globulin ratio.

Members have varying levels of expertise and participation 

Nurses take different courses, and each of these courses is at different levels. Some nurses are at the beginning level, others are at an intermediary, and some nurses are Registered Nurses. The nursing profession, therefore, allows the nurses to have different levels of initial preparation because of different educational and experience levels. For example, in a nursing school, there could be about 10,000 nurse graduates graduating in an academic year. Out of these, 15% could be high school diplomas as their highest nursing educational level, 30% graduating with an associate degree, another 30% with baccalaureate degrees, and the remaining with doctoral or masters' degrees.

It does not matter whether a nursing major got their education at a state university or community college. Even though the curriculum for a nursing course may differ between the institutions, they equally have a similar opportunity to become registered nurses. Those who want to become nurses are required to pass a certain examination like the National Council Licensure Exam or NCLEX-RN. Those who do not pass the exam do not become registered nurses, but they can assume the job of a nursing assistant.

Research Questions 

What are the primary objectives of the nursing profession in terms of achieving patient quality healthcare? 

What are the communication strategies in a nursing profession amongst the staff members to promote better healthcare outcomes? 

What are the main qualifications for different nursing job descriptions? 

PART 2: READING RESPONSE 1 

Reading Response 

This part of the essay is a response to John Swales's article titled " The Concept of Discourse Community ." In the essay, the author talks about different concepts and the difference between the speech communities and discourse communities. Swales's objective is to give a clarification of the difference between the two terms discourse and speech and to help in pointing out the need for a discourse community. The first and the main difference between a discourse and a speech, as provided by Swales, is the medium: the speech communities depend on the vocal interactions between the correspondents while discourse communities depend on the writing (pg. 470). The second difference between speech and discourse community by Swales is that the discourse communities are socio-rhetorical while the speech communities are sociolinguistics. That implies that the speech communities are interested in the social groups, while the discourse communities are interested in a group of persons with a common objective.

Another major difference between the speech and discourse by Swales is that the speech community is centripetal. Centripetal implies that people get absorbed into the general fabric of society. On the contrary, the discourse community is centrifugal. Centrifugal refers to people being grouped into common groups with special interests or common occupations. A community categorized as a speech community, people are admitted by accident or by birth; on the contrary, in a discourse community, people are admitted by training, persuasion, or their academic qualifications.

John Swales presents six characteristics of a discourse community, including; a shared public goal, a mechanism of intercommunication amongst its members, it has a participatory approach to give information and feedback. A discourse community has one or more genres in communicating its aims and objectives, it acquires particular lexis, and lastly, a discourse community has a threshold level of members with discourse expertise and degree of relevant content (Swales, 1987, pg. 472-473). According to John Swales, a discourse community is more convenient because it does not include the tension that can be found in the speech community and giving the writers freedoms, liberating them in the process.

One of the characteristics that Swales emphasizes amongst his six characteristics of a discourse community is the existence of a standard form of communication or a means of sharing information between the members of the community. In the nursing practice and most hospitals, emails are the dominant method of communication amongst the staff members. Nurses exchanges email a lot when at work with each other. Information about patient updates, department issues, and changes in shifts are all discussed over the internet via email. With email serving as the main means of communication, it does not imply that it is the only method of communication amongst the nurses ( Beaufort, 1997 ). Nurses also communicate through phone calls and text messages to talk about changes in the shift, call in sick, or to remind of an urgent issue—telephone is, therefore, also a major method of communication.

Interview Questions 

What is the appropriate age to start the nursing profession? Who is your role model in your profession? 

What are your academic qualifications? Do you belong to some nursing community? 

How is this community useful in your career and self-development? Explain. 

What are some of the things that motivated you to take a nursing course? Were you motivated by a nursing group? 

Is the nursing course fulfilling? What are some of the things that keep you going and loving your job? 

How long does it take for a new nurse to take the appropriate nursing courses to become a registered nurse? 

Is there structured support for assisting nurses? Name some of the recognized registered nursing organizations that advocate for nursing and nurses 

What are some of the technology trends in nursing today? How does your community above help you stay ahead in regards to technological advancement? 

Have you ever done nursing blogging? If not, are you interested in doing so? 

If you were to do nursing blogging, who will be your target? What would be your sources of inspiration? Is blogging about nursing a discourse community? 

Summary and Evaluation of Sources 

In my study, I have used scholarly articles, and the book is recommended in class Swales (1987). All my information is supported by evidence. I have referenced the necessary evidence to give credence to my claims. The first source, " Beaufort (1997), " is a peer-reviewed English research paper published in Research in Teaching English . The other source is by Swales, still regarding the discourse community. Swales has been my dominant reference because it is a classical and authority regarding the discourse community. My research can be easily validated using other earlier and recent literature. I believe my work is valid and reliable because I have borrowed my content from reputable sources.

From my study, my findings are that discourse community plays a critical role in helping affirm and establish a profession. Discourse community plays a critical role in shaping a career. In nursing, the discourse community is a source of networking for young nursing professionals. Discourse community also acts as a timestamp, memory, and source of history for the culture in that community. Most specifically, I have learned to identify a discourse community through Swales' six characteristics of a discourse community.

Bibliography 

Beaufort, A. (1997). Operationalizing the concept of discourse community: A case study of one institutional site of composing.  Research in the Teaching of English , 486-529. 

Roberts, D. (2019). Editorial. Connecting with the Nursing Discourse Community. MEDSURG Nursing, 28(6), 346–351. 

Swales, J. (1988). Discourse communities, genres, and English as an international language.  World Englishes ,  7 (2), 211-220. 

Swales, J. (1987). Approaching the Concept of Discourse Community. 

Whitehead, C., Kuper, A., Freeman, R., Grundland, B., & Webster, F. (2014). Compassionate care? a critical discourse analysis of accreditation standards. Medical Education , 48 (6), 632–643. https://doi.org/10.1111/medu.12429