creative writing for nurses

Nurse Turned Writer: The Ultimate Guide to Freelance Writing for Nurses

It’s 9 am, my kids are finally off to school and daycare, and I’m on my second cup of coffee. I have a few hours before my mani/pedi appointment, and then my oldest gets off the school bus around 2:30 pm. 

It’s just enough time to draft an article for one of my clients, a major wellness website. I spend an hour outlining and researching and then take a break to fold laundry and have a snack. It takes me two more hours to finish the first draft, where I pull in research from PubMed and MedlinePlus to help readers understand an important mental health disorder and how it’s treated.

Now it’s time for my nail appointment, and I use the downtime to read a book about business mindset. Afterward, I meet my daughter at the bus stop and pick up the little ones from daycare. I spend the afternoon helping with homework, providing endless snacks, and ferrying kids to extracurriculars. After everyone is in bed that night, I spend an hour revising and editing the piece before sending it off to my editor.

I worked about four hours today, plus another hour of professional development and responding to emails. Mainly from my couch. And I made $700. 

What is freelance nurse writing?

Freelance nurse writers use their advanced knowledge of patient education, disease processes and management, and the healthcare system to produce clear, accurate, and engaging health communications.

Nurse writers create a variety of content, like:

• Blog articles (like this one!)
• Patient brochures
• Professional training materials, including Continuing Education Credit (CEC) courses
• Newsletters and emails
• White papers
• Case studies
• Textbook chapters
• Articles and entries for medical apps
• Recruitment materials for clinical studies
• Advertising for pharmaceutical or medical device companies
• And much, much more

Some nurse writers choose to join a writing agency or large healthcare organization, which can provide job stability and benefits. On the other hand, freelance nurse writers are self-employed. This means they choose their own clients, what types of projects they accept, and when they work.

What qualifications do you need to become a nurse writer?

Freelance writers can work from anywhere in the world, at any hour of the day or night. All you need is a laptop, wifi, and strong writing and research skills.

To be successful as a nurse writer, you need a few basic qualifications. These include:

• Clinical experience working as a Registered Nurse (at least one year)
• Strong writing and research skills
• The ability to manage your time and work without direct oversight

Other qualifications can help you find clients or specialize in a particular niche. 

Beneficial qualifications include:

• Advanced degrees, like a Masters or Doctorate in a health-related field
• Additional years of clinical experience or deep knowledge of a particular specialty
• Facility with technology and social media (or a willingness to learn)
• Strong motivation to learn new skills

Why become a freelance nurse writer?

Nurse writing is the perfect career path for nurses looking for remote work with flexible hours. The job is scalable, allowing you to work more or fewer hours depending on your goals and other professional and personal responsibilities.

Nurse writing can be a side gig or a full-time job. It’s something you can start while still at the bedside, allowing you to establish your business and build a client list before going full-time. 

Some nurses turn to freelance writing to supplement their income or to build a viable retirement option if they know they want to leave the bedside in the future. There are nurse writers who write just 1 or 2 blog articles a month for a little extra cash, and there are other nurse writers who earn a full-time living from their work.

Some of the benefits of freelance nurse writing include:

• Scalable work: Your business can grow when you’re ready and take a backseat when you’re busy with other things
• Flexible hours: Work can be completed while your kids nap, while on vacation, or on your day off from bedside nursing
• Healthy income potential: It’s possible for nurse writers to support themselves and their families solely on their freelance writing income
• Autonomy: The ability to choose your own projects and clients based on what you most enjoy
• Independence: No boss to report to and no one to ask permission if you have a dentist appointment or one of your kids wakes up with a fever and can’t go to school that day
• Growth potential: The opportunity to learn exciting and relevant new skills based on your interests and goals

One of the greatest benefits of freelance nurse writing is that it’s possible to earn a healthy, full-time income from 25-35 hours per week. 

Since freelance writing is incredibly flexible, this allows nurse writers to take their kids to the doctor’s office, attend a daytime yoga class, or do their grocery shopping on a Tuesday morning, all without impacting their bottom line.

Types of Nurse Writing

There is enormous variety in the types of writing available to nurse writers. Each type requires slightly different skills and experience.

Health Writing

Health writing typically refers to patient-facing materials like blog articles, patient education materials, newsletters, health journalism, and other health materials written specifically for patients and general readers.

This type of writing is the easiest to break into for new writers. To be successful as a health writer, you should be able to translate complex ideas into simple language. It can also be helpful to understand concepts like search engine optimization (SEO) and writing for the web, which requires a particular tone and style.

Medical Writing

Medical writing tends to be more technical. The audience for medical writing includes healthcare providers, researchers and academics, and healthcare organizations. 

Most clients look for medical writers with advanced degrees like a Masters, Doctorate, or Pharm.D. It also helps if you’ve published research articles in the past.

Given the specialized nature of this work, the earning potential can be quite a bit higher. Potential projects in this genre might include:

• Research articles for publication
• Grant writing
• Articles, case studies, or white papers for healthcare providers or health executives
• Content for apps used by medical and nursing students
• Continuing Education Credit materials

This type of writing requires excellent research skills and the ability to assess research studies for methodology and statistical validity and then translate that research into something meaningful or actionable for providers and healthcare professionals.  

If you are interested in this type of writing, check out the American Medical Writers Association (AMWA) for more information. AMWA offers continuing education, an active member forum, and a job board.

AMWA also offers a certificate program for aspiring medical writers. Other options include well-reviewed continuing education programs at UC San Diego and The University of Chicago . This course by a current medical writer is also highly reviewed.

Before investing in a pricey certificate program, it’s worth exploring this career path in-depth and speaking with others in the field. While many medical writers earn six figures (or more) with this type of work, it does require a specialized background and more start-up effort than general health writing.

Copywriting

Copywriting is marketing and advertising. This may include Facebook ads, email campaigns, patient handouts, recruitment posters, or Google search ads. 

There are many online copywriting courses for nurses interested in this type of work, though most focus on general copywriting instead of health-specific writing. Copywriting has a high earning potential for those who can demonstrate how their writing increases sales or patient recruitment.

Marketing might seem like an odd choice for nurses, but advertising and marketing copy plays an essential role in medical research. 

For example, clinical trials require skilled copywriters to help find qualified patients who could benefit from new and emerging science. Pharmaceutical companies need ethical, experienced healthcare providers who can explain new medications or complex procedures to patients. Nonprofits need writers who can share their message with the public and help explain their mission to donors.

As a freelance writer, you can choose the projects and clients that fit your skills, background, and personal values.  

What do freelance nurse writers earn?

Earning potential for nurse writers can vary widely based on the type of writing and the number of hours you commit to client work each week. It’s important to know that freelance nurse writing takes time to develop. Nurse writers must be committed to their long-term goal to make it through the early months of building their business.

It’s also important to understand that self-employed freelance writers are responsible for their own taxes and business expenses. Nurse writers should expect to set aside anywhere from 20-40% of their income for taxes, professional development, retirement savings, and business expenses, depending on their goals.

General health writing earning potential

Many nurse writers start by writing blog articles for general health sites. With around 10 hours of work a week, many nurse writers find they can write 3-5 simple blog articles a month at a starting income of about $200 per 1000-word article. This rate can – and should! – increase quickly once a nurse writer has a decent portfolio of quality clips to demonstrate their expertise. 

Nurse writers with 1-3 years of experience usually earn anywhere from $300 – $700 for articles in the 1000-2000 word range. Experienced nurse writers who write for specialty clients can earn $500-$800 per article (or more), especially if they can demonstrate how their writing adds extra value, like optimized search strategy or increased sales potential. 

As a side hustle, nurse writing can generate $1500-$2500 per month after around six months of dedicated, persistent effort. Nurses who write blog articles full-time may earn up to $5000 per month within their first year or two. Of course, this will depend on the individual writer, their marketing strategy, and whether they specialize in a particular topic or niche.

New writers will find many opportunities to write for “content mills” that assign dozens of articles monthly at very low rates (as low as 2 cents a word). 

While these might be tempting to beginning freelancers looking to land their first few clients, nurse writers should remember that, as nurses, they have exceptional experience and training that should command higher rates than the average freelance writer.

Business writing and medical writing

There is greater earning potential for health and medical writing that requires additional skills like marketing strategy, technical language, or highly-specialized knowledge. In general, these are all skills that can be acquired through self-study and practice.

Nurse writers who work for business-facing clients (sometimes called B2B writing) and those who write highly technical pieces for academic or research clients can earn much more. For example, a well-researched case study that includes multiple interviews could be worth anywhere from $500-$4000, depending on the client, length, and topic.

Direct-consumer copywriting, patient recruitment, and advertising also have exceptional income potential for experienced and talented writers. Depending on the client, a single landing page directly tied to sales for a health-related product could be worth $2500 – $10,000 (or more!). Some writers even negotiate for a portion of the profit in addition to a base fee, guaranteeing continuing income from one piece of work.

The beauty of freelance writing is that you can experiment and try new types of writing until you find the exact kind that you love to do. This business can grow and flex as interests and life circumstances change.

Ready to launch your freelance writing career?

If you’re curious about freelance writing and want to learn more about starting your own freelance health writing business, check out part 2 of this series to learn all the nitty-gritty details, from creating a website to finding clients.

There are so many career options beyond the bedside. Learn more about remote nursing jobs and discover the right remote nursing career for your goals and lifestyle.

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How to Become a Freelance Nurse Writer: A Step-by-Step Guide

Are you curious about what it takes to become a freelance nurse writer? Do you dream of working in sweatpants, setting your own deadlines, and…

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• Professional Writing for Nurses

Professional Writing for Nurses: Interview With Nurse Educator Elaina Mahlan

Good writing skills are important in any professional context, but for nurses, they are especially important. You must be a skilled communicator if you wish to progress in your nursing career. This is true whether you are a nursing student, relatively new in the field, or an established nurse with years of experience.

We spoke with Elaina Mahlan , MSN, RN, CNE, and faculty member in the RN-to-BSN program at Purdue Global, about why good writing is so important in nursing and the types of writing you’ll do as you grow in your career.

Good Writing Is Vital in Charting, Updating EMRs, and Creating Care Plans

Good writing can help allow for better patient care and safety.

“Nurses at the associate’s level are writing for a very specific kind of audience, one that would connect with a chart,” Mahlan said. Nurses must be detailed and accurate, and it’s important to take emotion and subjectivity out of this type of writing. These factors also play an important role in the event that the chart becomes part of an audit or lawsuit.

It’s also important to remember that you are writing for multiple stakeholders. Consider the care plan, where the nurse frames the broad scope of a patient's care. When a nurse is writing a care plan, he or she must write at a level that is suitable to many people with varied individual interests.

“A nurse may create a written care plan that is not only for interaction with the nurse, but also with the patient, with a significant other who may be involved in the patient’s health journey, the physician, and various other members of the health care team,” Mahlan said. “Of course, it must also be written in a way that is appropriate for the patient, who is the focus of the plan in the first place.”

When charting, updating electronic medical records, and creating care plans, aim to be consistent, detailed, comprehensive, and accurate. Critics (auditors, lawyers) are looking for mistakes and inconsistencies.

Good Writing Skills Become Increasingly Important as Nurses Progress in Their Career

“When nurses come into education programs that are beyond initial nurses' training and licensure, their writing needs to target the particular audience and purpose that they're writing for, one that goes beyond the chart,” Mahlan said.As nurses advance in their career, the types of writing they do become more varied and the need for solid writing skills remains central.

For example, nurses at the BSN level will commonly interact on a community level more so than they would on an associate’s level. You may find yourself creating communication materials, information about where to go to get assistance, or educational materials about disease processes or health management.

“You're going to have to create those for the public in a way that takes into account what people's reading levels might be,” Mahlan explained. “How do I appeal to a broad audience? How can I be pithy in my writing, so that people will actually read what it is I'm trying to communicate to them? Can I speak to their interests and their needs in a way that's clear and complete but also concise?”

The inclusion of human emotion in writing becomes more appropriate as nurses move into policy-making.

“Nurses at this level want to influence public policy,” Mahlan explained. “When we're making the case for a change in legislation, that doesn’t just involve raw statistical data, we need to be able to convey a human story in a way that moves people to action—and nobody sees those human stories like a nurse does.”

Accrediting Bodies Emphasize the Need for Strong Communication Skills

“Nurses are communicators, and certainly written communication is an essential form of communication in general,” Mahlan said. “But beyond that common-sense level, the relevant accreditors tell us this is key. For example, the American Association for Colleges of Nursing accredits nursing programs all around the country, and they emphasize the ability to communicate effectively throughout the national accreditation standards.”

Similarly, the Joint Commission, which provides accreditation to myriad health care facilities, emphasizes communication skills in their National Patient Safety Goals . The commission lauds good communication for its ability to protect patient safety and the safety of the entire health care team..

“So beyond our common sense, we recognize from an accreditor's standpoint that the ability to communicate effectively is a drumbeat theme,” Mahlan said.

Nurses Must Be Able to Convey Outcomes to Different Audiences

Nurses are often in the position of having to measure outcomes and communicate those outcomes to decision-makers in a meaningful way. “If you can’t do so,” Mahlan said, “then you're not going to have support for your work on an ongoing basis.”

What kinds of outcomes? Maybe it's a technological innovation. Maybe it's a change in practice to implement evidence-based practice. Nurses often write reports for different stakeholders within their own institutions to convey what worked, to what extent, and what didn't work. “Who better to do that than the nurse who is at the point of care and in the best position to see what's working, what's not working, and why that might be happening?” Mahlan said.

“If you haven't clearly communicated the way something should be done, the rationale why it's done that way, and your policies and procedures aren't clear, we're in trouble before we ever get to the lawsuit phase,” Mahlan continued. “When we're not clear, folks at the point of service are going to fill in the blanks for themselves, and they may do that in a way that's very different than what was intended in the first place.”

Become a Better Writer: 10 Free Writing Tools and Resources

The need for nurses to be skilled written communicators is clear. If writing isn’t your strong point, take advantage of these free tools and resources that help improve your writing:

• The Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University − writing resources and instructional material
• Excelsior College OWL − multimedia support for writing and reading
• Writing Commons − peer-reviewed, open-education resource for college students
• ReadWriteThink − professional development strategy guides
• Grammar Girl − comprehensive site and podcast with featuring grammar and writing tips
• Grammarly − writing enhancement platform and grammar checker
• Hemingway Editor − online tool that highlights common writing errors
• Readability Test Tool − readability software
• Cliche Finder − tool that highlights clichés in copy
• ProWritingAid − grammar and editing tool

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Writing Tips for Nursing School Students

• Nursing School Writing Types
• Writing a Nursing Essay
• Citations Guide
• Common Writing Mistakes
• Writing Resources

Are you ready to earn your online nursing degree?

Writing is an essential skill nurses should achieve proficiency in early in their career. It is a crucial part of the profession, as nurses need to be able to effectively communicate with patients, families, and other healthcare professionals.

While verbal communication also plays a vital role in nursing, being able to write well builds the nurse’s ability to provide better care.

Being able to accurately detail a patient’s personal history, symptoms, and diagnosis allows for the execution of a precise treatment plan that is clearly communicated to all parties involved, both professional and personal.

From registered nurses to clinical nurses and beyond, being able to communicate effectively and efficiently is a critical soft skill that will help nurses in any role increase their ability to treat their patients.

This guide provides an overview of the types of writing nurses will experience throughout their educational training. Utilize the following tips and tricks to help strengthen your writing skills, which will ultimately help in the development of transferable career skills .

Types of Writing Nurses Will Do in School

Personal statements for nursing school.

Nursing schools want candidates who meet academic and professional requirements. They also want a candidate who demonstrates a sincere passion for patient care and individual connections. You should always craft a personal statement, even when the application doesn’t explicitly require one. Personal statements allow you to describe your goals, characteristics, credentials, volunteer work, and meaningful life experiences. A well-crafted essay can help you stand out among other qualified applicants. And, as with any piece of writing, you must take the time to revise.

In your personal statement, you should portray yourself as determined and empathetic, with characteristics, goals, work ethic, and healthcare philosophy that align with a program’s values. Some nursing schools ask for a general personal statement, while others require a specific prompt. Colleges commonly ask students to describe a hardship they overcame, a difficult task they accomplished, or a professional goal they hope to achieve through the program. Many schools also ask students to detail previous experiences in healthcare. You may decide to write about how you connect with patients or how you provide practical and emotional support to loved ones.

You will also encounter writing prompts during examinations, including standardized tests like the GRE or MCAT, nursing school entrance exams , and course-specific evaluations. You may also take exams to get state licensure or professional certification. In most of these instances, you will need to write one or several long-form essays. Proper planning is key. Though you won’t know what specific prompt the test will require, you can expect certain common topics. You can search online or use study guides to determine which prompts usually appear on each test.

On test day, you should begin by creating an outline that lists three main points in response to the prompt. Using these points, work backwards to write a central thesis to guide the essay’s structure. Review what you’ve written to ensure that the essay actually responds to the prompt at hand. Be sure to leave time to correct spelling, grammar, and stylistic errors.

Research Papers

Like essays, research papers follow a long-form structure. Unlike an essay, which heavily relies on the writer’s point of view, a research paper presents an in-depth investigation of a topic using data, expert opinions, and insights. While an essay evaluates general critical thinking and writing skills, a research paper tests your knowledge, research skills, and original contributions. Research papers also allow you to prove you understand what has been argued and discovered about a topic. Research papers, especially at the graduate and doctoral levels, require independent research and analyses. These papers sometimes take months or years to complete.

To write a successful research paper, you should pick a topic relevant to your interests and the nursing field. Possibilities include elderly care challenges, patient safety and ethics, mental health treatment and regulations in the U.S., and nursing shortages and possible solutions. Whatever your choice, you must plan accordingly. Advanced papers such as dissertations may require funding or help from professors. Research papers often consist of the following sections: abstract, introduction, literature review, methods, results, discussion, conclusion, and references. You should keep this general structure in mind as you prepare notes and outlines.

How Do You Write a Nursing Essay?

In nursing school, essay writing includes academic papers, personal narratives, and professional compositions. You should become familiar with each of the five major forms below. There are many similarities between these essay types, such as an overarching thesis and a supportive, logical structure. You should support claims with factual, statistical, anecdotal, and rhetorical evidence. However, each form requires distinct skills to achieve specific results.

Comparative

Cause and effect, citations guide for nursing students.

Citations allow readers to know where information came from. By citing sources, you avoid plagiarizing or stealing another person’s ideas, research, language, and analyses. Whether intentional or unintentional, plagiarism is one of the most egregious errors one can make. Consequences for plagiarism include automatic course failure, disciplinary actions from the university, and even legal repercussions. You should take special care to ensure you properly cite sources.

American Psychological Association (APA) Style

APA is the most commonly used style among natural scientists, social scientists, educators, and nurses. Like other citation styles, APA emphasizes clarity of font style, font size, spacing, and paragraph structure. APA citations focus on publication date, and in most cases, the date comes right after the author’s name. This order makes the style particularly useful for scientists, who value new research and updates on current findings. For more information on APA style, visit this official website .

(Author and year of publication, page number) “Punishment, then, will tend to become the most hidden part of the penal process” (Foucault, 1977, p. 9).

Chicago Manual of Style (CMS)

CMS (also known as CMOS or, simply, Chicago) features two citation systems, the notes and bibliography, and the author and date. This style is used primarily by historians, who place high importance on a text’s origin. The notes and bibliography include a superscript number with a corresponding footnote or endnote. Scientific professionals use the author and date citation, a generic parenthetical system with similarities to other citation styles. The CMS official website provides additional information, including changes to citation systems in the current edition.

“Punishment, then, will tend to become the most hidden part of the penal process”. 1 1. Michel Foucault, trans. Alan Sheridan, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977), 9.

(Author and year of publication, page number) “Punishment, then, will tend to become the most hidden part of the penal process” (Foucault 1977, 9).

Modern Language Association (MLA) Format

MLA format traces its history to 1951 when it was first published as a thin booklet. Today, MLA is the primary format used by academics and professionals in humanities, English, literature, media studies, and cultural studies. To adapt to the rapid growth of new mediums over the past few decades, MLA updates its citation system. Visit the MLA Style Center for in-depth information on new guidelines and ongoing changes. In general, in text citations consist of author and page number, or just page number if the author’s name appears in the text.

(Author and page number) “Punishment, then, will tend to become the most hidden part of the penal process” (Foucault 9).

Associated Press (AP) Style

Published in 1952, the original AP Stylebook was marketed to journalists and other professionals related to the Associated Press. AP now stands as the go-to style for professionals in business, public relations, media, mass communications, and journalism. AP style prioritizes brevity and accuracy. The style includes specific guidelines regarding technological terms, titles, locations, and abbreviations and acronyms. Unlike the previous styles, AP does not use parenthetical or in-text citations. Rather, writers cite sources directly in the prose. For more information, including style-checking tools and quizzes, visit the Associated Press Stylebook .

In the book, “Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison,” first published in English in 1977, philosopher Michel Foucault argues that “Punishment, then, will tend to become the most hidden part of the penal process”.

Which Style Should Nursing Students Use?

Because nurses rely on scientific terms and information, professionals in the field usually use APA style. Regardless of the purpose and specific genre of your text, you should always strive for concise, objective, and evidenced-based writing. You can expect to learn APA style as soon as you enroll in a major course. However, you should also prepare to learn other styles as part of your academic training. For example, freshman composition classes tend to focus on MLA guidelines.

Common Writing Mistakes Students Make

Active vs. passive voice.

Active and passive voice represent two different ways to present the same piece of information. Active voice focuses on the subject performing an action. For example, the dog bites the boy. This format creates clear, concise, and engaging writing. Using active voice, nurses might write, I administered patient care at 11:00. Passive voice, on the other hand, focuses on the object of the sentence or the action being performed. For example, the boy was bitten by the dog. A passive sentence is usually one that contains the verb “to be.” Using passive voice, you might write, patient care was administered at 11:00.

Professionals in the sciences often use passive voice in their writing to create an objective tone and authorial distance. Passive voice can prioritize specific terms, actions, evidence, or research over the writer’s presence. Additionally, nurses use passive voice because it is usually clear that the reported thoughts, actions, and opinions come from them. However, you must also learn how to use active voice.

Punctuation

There are 14 punctuation marks in the English language, each with multiple and sometimes overlapping uses. Additionally, certain punctuation marks only make sense in highly specific and nuanced grammatical instances. To master punctuation, you must learn through practice, particularly by revising your own writing.

For example, colons and semicolons are often used interchangeably, when they actually serve distinct purposes. Generally used before itemized lists, colons stand in for the phrases “here is what I mean” or “that is to say.” For example, I am bringing three things to the picnic: applesauce, napkins, and lemonade. Semicolons separate two independent clauses connected through topic or meaning. For example, It was below zero; Ricardo wondered if he would freeze to death. Comma splices, which create run on sentences, are another common mistake. You can identify a comma splice by learning the differences between an independent and dependent clause.

Grammar refers to the rules of a particular language system. Grammar determines how users can structure words and form sentences with coherent meaning. Aspects include syntax (the arrangement of words to convey their mutual relations in a sentence) and semantics (how individual words and word groups are understood). Unless you major in writing, literature, etymology, or another related field, you generally won’t examine English grammar deeply. Through years of cognitive development and practice, native users implicitly understand how to effectively employ the language.

Distinct grammatical systems exist for each language and, sometimes, even within a single language. For example, African American Vernacular English uses different syntactic rules than General American English. You should learn grammatical terms and definitions. Common errors include subject/verb agreement, sentence fragments, dangling modifiers, and vague or incorrect pronoun usage. Hasty writers can also misuse phonetically similar words (your/you’re, its/it’s, and there/their/they’re).

Writing Resources for Nursing Students

Apa style central, reviewed by:.

Shrilekha Deshaies, MSN, RN

Shri Deshaies is a nurse educator with over 20 years of experience teaching in hospital, nursing school, and community settings. Deshaies’ clinical area of expertise is critical care nursing and she is a certified critical care nurse. She has worked in various surgical ICUs throughout her career, including cardiovascular, trauma, and neurosurgery.

Shri Deshaies is a paid member of our Healthcare Review Partner Network. Learn more about our review partners here .

Page last reviewed November 30, 2021

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List of Nursing Resources on the Purdue OWL

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As a nursing student, you will write different types of texts, such as research papers and group presentations. All of this writing has common characteristics: to be concise, evidence-based, supported by credible and appropriate research, to be professional, and to follow APA style. This section offers resources that are designed to help nursing students with these and other writing concerns.

American Psychological Association (APA)

APA Style Workshop

APA Citation Rules

APA is used in scientific and social scientific disciplines, including nursing, and standardizes research and citation formats. These links provide information for APA style, with the first link offering an overview of APA style and the second providing specific APA rules and sample APA papers.

APA Paper Sample

This sample shows you how to write and format a nursing research paper in APA.

The Rhetorical Situation

This PowerPoint presentation will help you understand the importance of the context in which you write. There are many factors that influence your writing: you, the writer; your purpose; your audience; your context; and the culture surrounding the context. For example, you will write differently for your professors than you will for your patients. Their varying education levels and different situations, or context, will cause you to use different language and present your topic differently.

Audience Analysis

This resource will help you with one important part of the rhetorical situation: analyzing your audience and tailoring your writing to fit your audience’s needs. There is also a handout available on this page with a chart to help you with your audience analysis.

Writing Scientific Abstracts

This PowerPoint presentation discusses the importance of writing abstracts and offers tools on how to write them. Abstracts allow you to present information in a clear, concise manner and are part of writing in APA style.

Conducting Primary Research

Primary research is an important component while writing as a nursing student. It allows you to support your argument, or thesis statement, with evidence; this, in turn, creates ethos, or credibility, for you as an author. This link offers many resources about primary research, including how to get started and how to conduct the various kinds of primary research.

Conducting an Interview

This PowerPoint presentation discusses the steps involved in conducting an interview as part of primary research. You may be asked to conduct an interview with clinical nurses, patients, or physicians as part of a writing assignment or research paper. Consult this PowerPoint before contacting your interviewee because it offers tips for how to contact him or her.

Database Research Tutorial from the Purdue Library

Engaging in secondary research, or research that is gathered from existing research performed and published by another author, is an essential part of writing as a nursing student. Using databases is one way to collect information, and this resource links to the Purdue Library’s tutorial on how to use databases.

Searching the World Wide Web

The Internet is a convenient and useful way to gather information; however, nursing professors expect their students to perform research that goes beyond a Google search. This PowerPoint presentation offers strategies for conducting Internet research, and it explains components of using the Internet you may not be familiar with, for example, the visible and invisible web. Use this PowerPoint presentation in conjunction with the database research tutorial for a good overview of how to conduct Internet research.

Evaluating Sources of Information

Not all sources of information are credible or reliable, and it is your job as a nursing student to be able to tell the difference. This resource offers different ways to decipher whether or not a source is credible.

Documenting Electronic Sources

When conducting secondary research, you might come across credible electronic sources that you would like to integrate into your writing. Documenting these sources properly is important because it builds your credibility as a writer, and it shows your readers, i.e., your nursing professors, that you have followed APA guidelines. This resource provides information and links to other resources that will help you properly document electronic sources.

Annotated Bibliographies

Annotated bibliographies, a summary and/or evaluation of sources, can help you organize your research. This resource explains the purpose of annotated bibliographies and provides examples. There are examples for APA, MLA, and CMS on this page; be sure to follow the APA format, as each citation style differs.

Thesis: Establishing an Argument

This page explains the importance of a thesis and how you can create an effective statement. Thesis statements are important to your writing because they control the paper’s overall purpose. These statements are especially important for you as a nursing student because writing in nursing should be logical, organized, concise, and clear; having a strong thesis will help you achieve this type of writing.

Grammar, Mechanics, and a Brief Discussion about Revision

The Grammar and Mechanics section on the OWL will help you learn how to use correct language. Using correct grammar will help your ethos, i.e., it will build your credibility, and it makes your writing appear more professional. One way to help improve your grammar is by reviewing the pages within the grammar and mechanics section and by completing the grammar and mechanics exercises. Another way to help correct grammar mistakes is by revising your writing. You can fix most of your grammar errors by reading your paper aloud before you turn it into your professor. Reading your paper aloud also offers you a chance to hear your writing, and you may find that some of the ideas you thought were clear are not as clear or organized as you hoped they would be.

Designing an Effective PowerPoint Presentation

PowerPoint presentations are a useful tool to use when delivering individual or group presentations. This PowerPoint presentation defines the basic elements of a PowerPoint slideshow and discusses how you can use these elements in effective and professional ways.

Personal Statements

Personal statements are an important part of the application process for nursing school. This section of resources offers writing samples and information that will help guide you while writing the personal statement. While using these resources and writing your statement, keep in mind the specific application for which you writing, as different nursing schools ask for different types of personal statements, i.e., the applications may ask you to respond to different types of questions.

Résumés and Cover Letters

Résumés and cover letters are important documents traditionally created toward the end of your nursing education, though it never hurts to start creating them during the start of your education. Use these resources to help you create your résumé and cover letter. You also might find it useful to consult the rhetorical situation and audience analysis resources, as these resources will help you understand the context in which and for which you will create your résumé and cover letter. Links to commonly used databases and sites: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed http://www.apastyle.org/manual/whats-new.aspx http://www.apastyle.org/ Databases available through the Purdue Library website: Academic Search Premier Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition MEDLINE CINAHL

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Why Nurses Should Consider Creative Writing

Jun 27, 2014 | Blog

All nurses should consider writing their own stories. Only in our own stories will nurses be creative, caring people instead of the mindless bimbos we are often portrayed as in the media. But how can you write when you still have all those negative demons placed in your brain from sixth grade creative writing assignments? Find out why you should give creative writing a try as well as some tips for how to go about it if it’s your first time. 

Writing reduces your own dependence on stereotypes.

Stereotypes guide behavior.  The phrase “You’re just a nurse” is based on all types of unconscious stereotypes. Writing can make these unconscious stereotypes conscious.

Every form of writing has a point of view. Two of them are 3 rd omniscient (also called Mr. Know-it-All) and 1 st person. Most stereotypical thinking is 3 rd person omniscient, as in this sentence:

That patient with abdominal pain looks like a drug seeker.

This is a quote from a nurse who made assumptions about this patient based solely on the diagnosis. But what if she treats the patient as a drug seeker and misses something?  She needs to question her assumptions.

Writing in the 1 st person does this.  Let’s rewrite the above sentence in the 1 st person:

I was in so much pain after the car accident, but if I miss another day of work they’ll fire me. I grabbed my stomach and stumbled into the ED.

Changes the story a little, doesn’t it?

Writing in the first person made me aware of my own stereotypical thinking. My main character was a woman of a different race who was younger and pregnant. The effort I made to understand this character’s point of view enabled me to be more understanding of the young pregnant women in my practice. 

How to write hint #1

Read this sentence assuming the “she” is your boss:

She threw her pager and stormed out of the unit.

List the reasons why she would do that. Now, change the “she” to “I”:

I threw my pager and stormed out of the unit.

List the reasons why you would do this. If the lists are different you have just shifted the point of view—a key writing skill. You might try writing a 3-sentence story from each point of view. It is a good exercise in both tolerance and writing.

You can begin to imagine a different future.

Recall a chronic patient with a really whiney voice. Did you ever think, “Why should we even bother?”  You begin to feel trapped like you are in a bad movie plot that repeats itself.

Writing fiction helps you to reimagine and can get you out of this bad movie.

If you have ever journaled, you have probably experienced the release of putting something to paper.  Creative writing is nothing more than journaling with characters and plots you create. When a story is written the author can make anything happen.  As you write creatively, the bonds that kept you thinking one way are loosened. This improves your ability to think about this patient differently. Like a good plot twist, you can imagine a different ending.

How to write hint #2

What would you think if someone told you to write a story about this repetitive patient? In a writing training class for nurses I lead we get reactions like, “I can’t write. No one will like it.” To deal with this we encourage people to write stories of about 50 words or less.

Once people have written this story, we ask people to imagine a completely different ending and write 50 words leading to that ending. The thought to create this new ending, no matter what the quality of the writing, was beneficial to all participants. Here is an example of the responses we would get:

I answered the phone and she was there.  Mrs. Smith the whiner saying, “I am in pain.  My meds ran out” I quickly told her, “We can’t renew them until the end of the month. “You never listen.” She told me.  Say something I want to hear I thought.

Here is the different ending:

I answered the phone and it was Mrs. Smith asking for her meds early.  “My meds ran out.” She intoned.  Breathe deeply I told myself. When she paused, I reminded her of her pain contract and asked if she had used her relaxation exercises?  She sighed.

Writing is one way to imagine different endings. 

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Professional Writing for Nurses

Nurses working in the complex health-care system require clear, concise, and accurate writing. Good writing supports strong verbal skills, promoting effective communication among health-care teams. The content below shows ways to develop good writing not only in school but also in your professional career.

Writing Topics

According to Johnson and Rulo (2019), good writers remain essential for the future of the nursing profession. Learning to write well is a skill, and like any skill, it requires practice and commitment. This skill helps you to excel in your profession by promoting efficiency of information in collaborative care, developing business plans to sustain health-care efforts, and creating programs to address the health of populations. This commitment involves using critical thinking to learn the writing process, to master rules of grammar and writing mechanics, and to take the time to write.

The writing process includes pre-writing, drafting, and revision.

• Organize articles, notes, and thoughts (provides frame or angle for paper).
• Write the objective or thesis statement at the top of the paper (everything you write should support this statement).
• Review documents, and write down the main ideas. Make sure what you use supports the statement at the top of the paper.
• Begin with the weakest point moving to the strongest.
• Compare and contrast.
• Give information chronologically, showing evolution.
• Show relationship or cause-effect, opposites, or consequence.
• Outline the process.
• Define issue and components.
• Give testimony of experts and show data.
• Keep presentation method consistent throughout the paper.

Use the following steps and examples to assist you in your writing.

1. Write cohesive paragraphs.

Review your outline and choose the ideas to cover in your content. Each idea should be the first sentence in the paragraph, and all the content should relate to the first sentence.

2. Maintain continuity and flow in your writing by connecting your thoughts.

Connect thoughts by using a word in the preceding sentence..

Correct: The program focuses on approaches that promote active living. Schools have adopted this program to encourage students to become physically active.

Incorrect: The program focuses on approaches that promote active living. Students are encouraged to become physically active.

Connect thoughts by using transitional words.

Correct:  Particles inhaled through vaporized nicotine are linked to asthma, stroke, heart disease, and diabetes. In addition, nicotine is dissolved in solvents that is linked to carinogenic activity.

Incorrect:  Particles inhaled through vaporized nicotine are linked to asthma, stroke, heart disease, and diabetes. Nicotine is dissolved in solvents that is linked to carinogenic activity.

Examples of Flow

Example of good flow.

Workplace civility is tied to employee satisfaction. Work environments infused with positivity, teamwork, empowerment, and supportive leaders result in job satisfaction and positive consumer experiences. To promote teamwork and a positive practice work environment, all entities must be actively involved including support personnel, employees, team leaders, and management. Education of all those working in an organization is vital to understand and identify workplace incivility.

Example of poor flow

Conflict is inevitable in varying degree when two or more individuals work together. Incivility in the workplace can occur in a variety of ways and is often tolerated and too frequently goes unrecognized. Methods of communication are often affected by diversity within the workplace. Education and tolerance empower employees to value diversity. Work environments infused with positivity, teamwork, empowerment, and supportive leaders result in job satisfaction and positive consumer experiences. To promote teamwork and a positive practice work environment all must be actively involved including support personnel, employees, team leaders, and management. Education of all those working in an organization is vital to understand and identify workplace incivility.

Speedily release your creative ideas by forgetting sentence structures and grammar using the Race Car Driver technique.

Design content by selecting and organizing chunks of information using the architect technique.

Nail the sentence structure to ensure continuity and flow using the carpenter technique.

Examine the details of your content using the judge technique.

This is an example of a student’s paper showing the completed writing process, using the 3-prong approach, which includes the following:

• Tell your audience what you are going to tell them.
• Then tell them what you told them.  

Supervisory Support for Nurse Burnout

Introductory paragraph.

One in three nurses leaves the nursing profession within the first two years of practice (Blair, 2014). Short-staffed units, both inpatient and outpatient, experience decreased quality patient care, which results in substandard care. Standards for quality of care are at the forefront of research, and hospital organizations are not reimbursed for substandard care. To rectify the increasing number of nurses leaving facilities and the profession, hospital administrators need to focus their efforts on the retention of nurses, which increase staff satisfaction and maintain safer health-care environments (Lartey et al., 2014). Addressing nurse burnout and turnover involves examining the problem, recognizing benefits of the intended recipients, using interdisciplinary teamwork, and sharing ways to advance nursing practice through dissemination of project results.

Introduction:  Tell your readers what you are going to tell them.

Show general background statement(s) that grab your readers' attention.

Narrow topic to the thesis statements.

State the intent of the paper, so your readers know what to expect.

Statement of Problem

Lack of transformational managerial support and nurse engagement increases nurse burnout and turnover. According to Bakker and Albrecht (2018), work engagement is often defined as a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption. When these characteristics are lacking, work engagement declines, resulting in turnover. This leads to decreased nursing staff on a unit, which affects health-care costs, job satisfaction, and quality patient care (Lartey et al., 2014). In addition, excessive nursing turnover yields a loss of experience, skill, and knowledge for units, and these strengths can take time to regain (Lartey et al., 2014). Employment and improvement of nurse engagement combats the increasing number of nurses leaving the profession. To increase nurse engagement, nursing managers need to embrace a transformational support system. This master’s project will work to identify and address nurse burnout by improving nurse engagement through nurse manager professional development and training.

Ways Project Contributes to Intended Recipients

This master’s project benefits managers, nurses, and health-care organizations in the outpatient setting. Managers will likely experience accomplishment in their careers as they learn to promote connections and motivation among and with their staff members, as they address burnout and turnover with their nurses. Health-care organizations will likely experience an increase in quality of care, decreasing patient care costs and monies spent on hiring and training replacement nurses.

Rationale for Importance of Project

Nurse burnout has been a topic of nursing research since the 1980s when Maslach and Jackson (1981) identified nurse burnout as a syndrome that consists of three components, including emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a low degree of personal accomplishment. A multitude of research studies and case analyses of nurse burnout have been performed and have identified possible interventions that may combat nurse burnout and turnover. Included in these findings were increased supervisory support and engagement. However, a gap in knowledge remains on how to increase nurse retention (Garcia-Sierra et al., 2016; Gonzales, 2018; Khamisa et al., 2015; Minmin, 2015). This master’s project will fill in that gap by identifying how nurse manager education and training can improve nurse satisfaction and decrease nurse turnover.

Interdisciplinary teamwork

In the past decade, health care has experienced significant changes and has undergone a surfeit of transformations turning health-care organizations into more interdisciplinary collaborations (Bogaert et al., 2018). Such changes have led to complex processes between multiple disciplines and increases the number of stakeholders when patient care is affected (Bogaert et al., 2018). This master’s project will include nursing, medicine, health-care administration, staff education department, and human resources.

Significance to advance nursing practice

The significance of this project is to discover evidence-based practices that reduce nurse burnout and to put them into practice. The aim of this project involves implementing interventions identified throughout recent research and trial it. Increasing nurse engagement and transformational supervisory support will potentially decrease nurse burnout and increase nurse retention.

Body:  Tell them.

Nurses are leaving the nursing profession within the first few years of training completion and furthering the short-staffing present in outpatient departments throughout the United States. Lack of nurses leads to poor quality of care for patients and further increases health-care costs and nurse burnout. By initiating a nurse manager professional training program, nurse managers will be capable of providing transformational support to their nursing staff. With this support, nurses will potentially have fewer burnout symptoms and higher engagement, increasing nurse retention in outpatient hospital organizations.

Concluding Paragraph

Then tell them what you told them.

Identifying your rhetorical situation strengthens your message and helps to organize your writing.

• Message:  
• Context: 
• Reduce the number of nurses leaving the profession.
• Health-care management
• Hospital administrators need to focus their efforts on the retention of nurses, which increase staff satisfaction and maintain safer health-care environments.
• Nurses experiencing burnout in the outpatient setting of health care.

For clear and concise writing, use the active voice as much as possible. Active or passive voice depends on the verb, subject, and object relationship.

The format of the active voice includes the following order: subject, verb, and object. The format of the passive voice includes the following order: object, verb, and subject.

Example of Active Voice : Several factors link cancer and obesity. (subject, verb, and object)

Example of Passive Voice : Cancer and obesity are linked to several factors. (object, verb, subject)

Avoid beginning sentences with “there” or “it,” which helps promote the active voice. Avoid using “be” words whenever possible to promote the active voice, such as is, am, are, was, were, be, being, been, has, have, had, do, does, did, shall, should, will, would, may, might, must, can, could.

These structures include nouns with nouns, verbs with verbs, adjectives with adjectives, prepositional phrases with prepositional phrases, and so on.

1. Example: Items in a series

Correct: Huddles on the unit improve communication, increase productivity, and promote nurse satisfaction . (Verb required for parallel construction.)

Correct: Single-checking promotes accountability, adherence to medication administration procedures, and appraisal of one’s knowledge of drugs. (Noun required for parallel construction.)

Incorrect: Huddles on the unit improve communication, increase productivity, and nurse satisfaction .

Incorrect: Single-checking promotes accountability, adherence to medication administration procedures, and updating one’s knowledge of drugs.

2. Example: Vertical list

Boxes outline vertical lists

Correct: Post-Assessment Education

• Performed by the discharge nurse
• Used to assess education given throughout stay
• Completed to customize discharge education for patients

Incorrect: Post-Assessment Education

• Help in customizing discharge education for patients

3. Example: Coordinate Ideas

Coordinate ideas when using conjunctions (such as for, and, nor, but, or, yet) by ensuring they are paired in similar grammatical form. Use the same format for comparisons created by than or as.

Correct: Administrators benefit from this educational process by ensuring quality care and by decreasing readmissions.

Incorrect: Administrators benefit from this educational process by ensuring quality care and decreasing readmissions.

4. Example: Two-part connectives

Two-part connectives include either/or, neither/nor, not only/but also, both/and. After the first word, make sure to insert the second word.

Example: The palliative care team can treat the symptoms that result not only from the disease but also from treatment for the disease.

Learn when to use “that” or “which.” Use “that” for essential information to understand the main idea. Use “which” for nonessential information, meaning the information is not required to understand the main idea. A guideline to remember includes the following: “that defines, which describes.”

Example: Palliative care medicine is a subspecialty of medicine that focuses on managing symptoms of chronic and terminal illnesses.

Example: Approach of palliative care remains centered on both the patient and family, which improves quality of life for all involved.

Correct: The data estimate the prevalence of metabolic syndrome in this population. ( Data is plural , so the verb needs to agree–estimate.)

Correct: Patient and family benefit from hospice care. ( Subject is plural (patient and family), so verb needs to agree–benefit.)

Incorrect: The data estimates the prevalence of metabolic syndrome in this population.

Incorrect: Patient and family benefits from hospice care.

Framing is also described as “finding an angle for a story” and involves ways information is organized, simplified, interpreted, and perceived. The term angle was introduced in the pre-writing process of creating an outline. The frame for your content reflects the “big picture.” How you frame your content can influence your readers’ perceptions, help them to connect with new information by what they already know, elicit questions about complex issues, and provide different types of perspectives. Some ideas for framing your writing include the following:

• Begin with the weakest point moving to strongest.
• Define the issue and components.

Write an effective introduction by grabbing the reader’s attention, stating your thesis statement, and telling your readers what to expect. (Tip: Write your beginning at the end.)

The introduction is the first paragraph of your paper (or presentation to your staff). This paragraph should get the readers' attention and convey what to expect in the remainder of the paper. The structure of the introduction reflects a funnel-shaped format: (a) show general background statement, (b) narrow the topic to the thesis statement, and (c) state the purpose/intent of the paper.

Example of an introductory paragraph: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2017a), chlamydia is the most frequently reported communicable disease. Incidence rates of chlamydia have been increasing in recent years, raising concerns with community health nurses. These rates are examined by reviewing the most recent local and national chlamydia statistics, potential barriers to accurate reporting, and health disparities related to the disease.

Creating the conclusion reflects the last statement in the 3-prong approach of “then tell them what you told them.” In the conclusion, you synthesize the thesis statement with the main ideas. Think of the conclusion as the last words to your readers. What do you want them to remember? Avoid introducing new information in the conclusion.

Use bias-free language by avoiding “demeaning attitudes” in your writing related to “age, disability, gender, participation in research, racial or ethnic identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, . . . other personal factors” ( APA, 2020, p. 131 ). (https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/bias-free-language/#:~:text=The%20American%20Psychological%20Association%20emphasizes,demeaning%20attitudes%20in%20their%20writing.)  

Correct: Patients receiving chemotherapy experience side effects.

Incorrect: Chemotherapy patients experience side effects.

Correct: The nurses will participate in these exercises for six weeks to expose each nurse to multiple exercises. (Deleted “in an effort.”)

Correct: The results will be compared to decide on the effectiveness of the exercises.  (Deleted “to make a determination.”)

Incorrect: The nurses will participate in these exercises for six weeks in an effort to expose each nurse to multiple exercises.

Incorrect:  The results will be compared to make a determination to decide on the effectiveness of the exercises.

Avoid using extra words in your writing, such as in light of, in order, in fact, very.

Slang or jargon includes terminology used by a specific group.

Correct: The nurse checked the results of the complete blood count (CBC).

Incorrect: The nurse checked the results of the CBC.

Colloquialisms include informal expressions.

Correct: Smith and Jones (2020) indicate the rise of obesity in children remains a problem.

Incorrect: Everyone knows that obesity is a problem in children.

Avoid contractions.

Correct: The current average length of stay does not allow for the full benefits of hospice services.

Incorrect: The current average length of stay doesn’t allow for the full benefits of hospice services.

Avoid attributing human actions to nonhuman sources.

Correct: The nurses on the unit plan to educate the patients about the treatment plan.

Incorrect: The unit plans to educate the patients about the treatment plan. (The unit is not human.)

Correct: This assessment shows the questions.

Incorrect: This assessment asks the questions. (The assessment is not human.)

Correct: The improper association of palliative care with strictly end-of-life care is a barrier to referral. This barrier highlights the need for education directed at overcoming that stigma and expanding the meaning of palliative care.

Incorrect: The improper association of palliative care with strictly end-of-life care is a barrier to referral. This highlights the need for education directed at overcoming that stigma and expanding the meaning of palliative care.

Eliminate ambiguity by telling the reader what the pronoun refers to, such as that report, these symptoms, and those patients.

1. Insert a comma between two complete sentences with a conjunction (and).

Correct: JUULs are e-cigarettes that look like USB ports, and they have a high level of nicotine.

Incorrect: JUULs are e-cigarettes that look like USB ports and they have a high level of nicotine.

2. Insert commas between elements.

Correct: Typical conditions include gastroesophageal reflux disease, gallstones, ulcerative colitis, and hepatitis.

Incorrect: Typical conditions include gastroesophageal reflux disease, gallstones, ulcerative colitis and hepatitis.

3. Insert a comma after an introductory phrase.

Correct: At each grade level, teachers plan to implement the new program.

Incorrect: At each grade level teachers plan to implement the new program.

4. Insert commas to set off nonessential clauses.

Nonessential clauses: The clause adds further information, but when the clause is removed, the meaning and structure of the sentence remain intact.

Correct: Behavior interventions, such as teaching new coping skills, were also helpful in reducing the caregiver’s level of stress.

Correct: National obesity rates for adolescents are considerably higher than Utah’s rates, which is attributed to several factors.

Correct: Specific health districts have higher rates of children with obesity, including Tooele, Weber-Morgan, Salt Lake Central, and Bear River.

Incorrect: Behavior interventions such as teaching new coping skills were also helpful in reducing the caregiver’s level of stress.

Incorrect: National obesity rates for adolescents are considerably higher than Utah’s rates which is attributed to several factors.

Incorrect: Specific health districts have higher rates of children with obesity including Tooele, Weber-Morgan, Salt Lake Central, and Bear River.

As you progress in writing, you move through different stages from roughly sketching out your ideas to ultimately attending to the final details. These stages or techniques, race car driver, architect, carpenter, and judge , support you in the writing process. Notice each technique concludes with “take a break,” and you decide on the length of the break. However, after creating your draft (race car driver technique), one suggestion is taking a break from the writing process for a day. This action allows you to see your content with a new perspective. If you feel stuck with your writing, then write the easy sections first. Remember learning to write well is a skill, and like any skill, it requires practice and commitment. This skill will help you excel in your professional career.

When you write, use your own words.

Familiarize yourself with the WSU Annie Taylor Dee SON plagiarism policy below. In addition, make sure you understand what constitutes plagiarism. See activity below.

• The WSU Annie Taylor Dee SON has a no-tolerance plagiarism policy. All student work is expected to be referenced correctly.
• Based on course/assignment details, the student may take the opportunity to read the plagiarism report and rewrite the assignment in order to lower the plagiarism percentage; or
• Based on results of the internet-based plagiarism tool, faculty or instructor may proceed with the Academic Integrity Policy on violations and sanctions.

Paraphrasing

Professional writers need to know how to paraphrase effectively. See the quoted sentence: “Chickenpox is a highly contagious viral infection in which a person develops extremely itchy blisters all over the body” (Kaneshiro, 2013, para. 1).

When paraphrasing, notice how the sentence and word structures change: Varicella remains an infectious viral illness with a blister-like rash on the body, causing severe itching (Kaneshiro, 2013).  

Activity: Evaluate each sentence for plagiarism.

• Chickenpox is a highly contagious viral infection in which a person develops extremely itchy blisters all over the body (Kaneshiro, 2013, para. 1). No quotation marks  
• Chickenpox is a contagious viral infection with extremely itchy blisters all over the body (Kaneshiro, 2013, para. 1). Too many words from the original sentence  
• “Chickenpox is a highly contagious viral infection in which a person develops extremely itchy blisters all over the body.” No reference  
• Chickenpox is a highly contagious viral infection in which a person develops extremely itchy blisters all over the body. No quotation marks and no reference  
• “Chickenpox is a highly contagious viral infection in which a person develops extremely itchy blisters all over the body” (Kaneshiro, 2013, para. 1). Correct Example

Kaneshiro, N. K. (2013). Chickenpox. Medline plus medical encyclopedia . Retrieved from http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001592.htm

Writing Process

As you progress in writing, you move through different stages from roughly sketching out your ideas to ultimately attending to the final details.

Racecar Driver Technique

Speedily release your creative ideas by forgetting sentence structures and grammar using the racecar driver technique.

• Insert the main points from your outline on your paper with spaces in between. (Tip: Ensure main points reflect assignment directions and rubric.)
• Give yourself a time limit for writing your draft. Get ready and go!
• Go for quantity!
• Don't stop to design, build, or judge your content
• Write quickly!
• Start on any main point.
• Keep going!
• Take a break from the writing process.

Architect Technique

• Delete irrelevant information
• Insert the main idea in the first sentence of the paragraph.
• Relate all content in the paragraph to the main idea.
• Show general background statement(s).
• Narrow the topic to the thesis statement.
• State the purpose/intent of the paper.
• Include a summary of the main points and thesis statement in the concluding paragraph.

Carpenter Technique

• Review each sentence to ensure it reflects conciseness and clarity, leads to the next sentence, and contributes to the overall paper.
• Read the paper aloud, and listen to how well the sentences flow.

Judge Technique

• Inspect spelling. Spelling should conform to the Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary per APA guidelines.
• Read aloud and listen to the grammar and tone of your paper.
• Check punctuation using the APA Manual, 7th edition.
• Check the APA format using the 7th edition.
• Ask yourself—if the audience is unfamiliar with the topic, have I demonstrated clarity and depth so that the audience will easily understand the content?

Flowers, B. S. (2014). Madman, architect, carpenter, judge: Roles and the writing process. Intellectual Entrepreneurship . Retrieved from http://www.ut-ie.com/b/b_flowers.html

See also: The Stages and Techniques of the Writing Process (https://www.weber.edu/wsuimages/ProfessionalWritingForNurses/Stages-and-Techniques-of-the-Writing-Process.pdf)

Good writing requires revisions, which includes soliciting feedback from faculty, peers, and content experts. Learning to feel comfortable with receiving and giving feedback remains essential for improving your writing. Another means of soliciting feedback is through the Writing Center (https://www.weber.edu/WritingCenter/default.html) at Weber State University, which provides online tutoring.

References and Resources

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American psychological association (7th ed.).

Johnson, J. E., & Rulo, K. (2019). Problem in the profession: How and why writing skills in nursing must be improved. Journal of Professional Nursing, 35 (2019), 57-64.

Preferred Spelling use the Merriam-Weber Dictionary (https://www.merriam-webster.com) APA page 61

Psychological terms use the APA Dictionary of Psychology (https://dictionary.apa.org)

WSU Online APA 7th Edition Training (https://elearning.weber.edu/interactives/apa/apa7Tutorial/story.html)

Grammarly-free Program (https://www.grammarly.com/)

Proofing Tools on a PC: Some of you may have a proofing tool on your computer. On a PC computer, in your Word Program, go to "File" and select "Options." The Word Options menu shows up. Next, select "Proofing." See the Writing Style box towards the bottom, select "Grammar & Style," and click OK. (If you have used this tool previously for the paper, then select "Recheck Document," select yes, and click OK at the bottom. You will see your paper on the Home page. Next, select "Review" and select "Spelling & Grammar." On the right side of the screen, the program will review your paper with your help.

Proofing Tools on a Mac: On a Mac computer, in your Word Program, go to "Preferences" and click on "Spelling and Grammar". Make sure the checkbox for checking Grammer is checked. Check your other tools in Word for writing helps.

UNMC College of Nursing Creative Writing Project

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Nurses tell stories. Over coffee on break we tell stories. After work over pancakes we tell stories. Stories make us laugh, build camaraderie, and help us cope. We should not be the only ones who hear our stories. The world needs to hear your story of nursing. That is what this award is about.

We are collecting stories from students about nursing experiences. We are going to print them and place them on the web for the world to see, enjoy and learn about nursing. Without a doubt, YOUR story belongs there; but it won't be shared unless you enter the competition.

ATTENTION all nursing students! ANNOUNCING: First Annual University of Nebraska College of Nursing Creative Writing Awards . SEEKING: Well-written stories that illustrate the nursing experience. WHY? Six $2000 Awards, and a chance to tell the world about nursing HOW CAN I PARTICIPATE? It's easy!  SUBMIT YOUR 2021-2022 STORY HERE!

We are collecting stories!

We are collecting stories and this year’s theme is Nurse's Confront Boundaries That Separate Us.

The boundaries that separate people are difficult to cross. Different political views, races, genders or incomes promote stereotypes and hamper true relationships. Yet, Nurses cross these boundaries to provide effective care. When we do confront these boundaries we experience frustration, challenge, and even anger. If we overcome these difficulties, we become better nurses. We are looking for stories where students confronted a boundary and came out the other side a better nurse.

Realistically, we don’t always successfully overcome these boundaries and we are left wondering what went wrong. If you have not come out the other side but want to, we will consider that story as well.

Stories should be about 2 pages.

ATTENTION all nursing students! ANNOUNCING: Third Annual University of Nebraska College of Nursing Creative Writing Awards . SEEKING: Well-written stories that illustrate the nursing experience. WHY? Four $1000 Awards (students only), and a chance to tell the world about nursing HOW CAN I PARTICIPATE? It's easy!  SUBMIT YOUR 2024-2025 STORY <! - - HERE! - - > Students: HERE! Alumni: [email protected]

Creative Writing Project 2022 Winners

Creative writing project 2021 judges and winners.

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One of our students’ assignments during their first clinical experience is to begin a journal. Through their journal they can watch their own transformation. Through their writing we can understand contemporary nursing and midwifery through the eyes, hands, and feelings of these remarkable students and soon-to-be APRNs.

YSN’s annual Creative Writing Awards are enlivened by the inspirational presence of YSN Professor Linda Honan. Yale nursing students submit their narratives, journal entries, and other creative writing for consideration of one of three significant student awards. This annual gathering, beloved by our community, also features prominent writers and thinkers.

Poetry and prose submissions are currently being collected for the Creative Writing Awards: Centennial Edition. Check out full details here and submit your poetry or prose by 11:59 pm on March 25, 2024.

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“Writing Right”: A Workshop Approach to Improving Nursing Students’ Writing

Jennifer c. hutchinson.

1 Department of Nursing, Longwood University, Farmville, VA, USA

JoEllen Pederson

2 Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice Studies, Longwood University, Farmville, VA, USA

Introduction

Effective communication is an essential skill for the professional nurse. Previous research demonstrates that nursing students lack skills in written communication, and there is limited time in the nursing curriculum to provide needed instruction. To address this issue, a writing workshop was provided for students at a regional state university.

Nursing faculty developed and led four identical in-person sessions of the workshop over the course of one semester. Before and after each workshop, students completed the same quantitative survey.

Data indicate that students’ knowledge and confidence of American Psychological Association (APA) format increased significantly as a result of the workshop.

A workshop approach is a useful strategy to address the writing needs of nursing students.

Introduction/Background

In The Essentials: Core Competencies for Professional Nursing Education , the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) ( 2021 ) describe 10 domains for nursing, which “constitute a descriptive framework for the practice of nursing” (para. 4). Embedded in these domains is the need for nurses to have strong written communication skills. Specifically, Domain 1: Knowledge of Nursing Practice and Domain 4: Scholarship of Nursing Practice reference the importance of research in the nursing profession.

What Was the Problem?

With these domains in mind, one objective of nursing faculty is to improve undergraduates’ communication skills as they increase their nursing knowledge in preparation for entry-to-practice. This is complicated, however, by the extensive curriculum requirements of pre-licensure nursing programs. The challenge becomes how to teach students written communication skills while also staying focused on other essential learning outcomes.

Why Was It a Priority?

Research indicates that nursing faculty commonly find that writing is a significant challenge for students ( Diehl, 2007 ; Troxler et al., 2011 ). Despite this fact, writing skills are not often a focus of instruction in undergraduate nursing education ( Miller et al., 2015 ). This is likely related to the significant volume of discipline-specific content that must be covered to prepare students to be successful on the licensure examination (NCLEX-RN).

Summary of What is Known About the Problem

Recent research in this area relates to various strategies that nurse educators have employed to address this problem. Some of the approaches identified are guided instruction ( Miller et al., 2015 ), use of workshops ( Derouin et al., 2015 ), discipline-specific writing education ( Mitchell et al., 2017 ), and strategies to incorporate writing across the curriculum ( Hawks et al., 2016 ).

Workshops, like the ones discussed in this paper, have successfully been used to improve writing skills of both nurses and nursing students ( Derouin et al., 2015 ). For example, Johnson et al. (2007) utilized a workshop approach aimed at developing the technical writing skills of underrepresented and disadvantaged baccalaureate nursing students; use of APA reference style was one of the workshop topics. Nursing students learn APA format for several reasons. APA format teaches students to write using professional standards, to read complex research documents systematically, and to give proper credit to authors for academic advancements ( Schwartz et al., 2020 ). In essence, teaching students APA format helps them become proficient communicators of complex information.

Purpose of the Project

In an effort to enhance the writing skills of nursing students, a writing workshop was developed that addressed a specific weakness noted among students across the program: knowledge and use of American Psychological Association (APA) format. Findings indicate APA workshops improve students’ confidence and ability to use APA format. Based on faculty experiences, a national nursing organization's recommendation, and previous literature, the question being addressed by this research is: Can a workshop approach improve nursing students’ experience, confidence, and knowledge of APA format?

A quantitative pre-test, post-test questionnaire was developed to measure students’ experience, confidence, and ability in using and understanding APA format. Questions were identical on the pre-test and post-test. While names were not recorded on surveys, each student was given an identification number to put on their survey. Survey participation was voluntary. Pre-test surveys were given immediately prior to the workshop, and post-test surveys were given immediately following the APA workshop.

Interventions

Four identical workshops were offered over the course of one semester. For consistency, the information was presented by the same two nursing faculty members at each workshop. PowerPoint was used to present the content to participants, which consisted of four parts: rationale for using APA format, essential APA paper elements and format, properly crediting works in the text, and constructing the reference list. Workshop days and times varied in an effort to accommodate students’ schedules. Faculty presenters partnered with the university Writing Center staff and enlisted the support of student writing consultants to assist with the workshops. The Writing Center is used by students who seek out help with writing assignments and works based on a peer tutoring model. One or two writing consultants were present and contributed to each session. The sessions were voluntary for students, and interested students signed up to attend one session. Students in this nursing program are required to attend one out-of-class enrichment activity per academic year. The APA workshop counted as that enrichment activity for participants. Therefore, this study is based on a convenience sample of interested nursing majors. There were 175 nursing majors on campus during the spring of 2021. In total, 49 nursing majors participated in the workshops. Of the 49 total participants, there were 34 first-year students, 10 sophomores, and five juniors. No senior participants were included because all senior nursing majors were off campus completing internships. Attendees were predominately female and white and between the ages of 18 and 22 years old, which is reflective of the population of nursing majors at this institution. To be a nursing major, students have to maintain a GPA of 2.75; therefore, all participants in the workshops were in good academic standing.

The 1-hour workshop took place on campus after classes ended for the day, giving students a better opportunity to attend, if they desired. PowerPoint was used to present the information at each workshop. The content consisted of four main parts: rationale for using APA format, essential APA paper elements and format, properly crediting works in the text, and constructing the reference list. Rationale for using APA format included information about scholarly writing, ethical and legal standards, plagiarism and self-plagiarism, and a discussion of the university honor code. Topics covered under the “Essential APA Paper Elements and Format” portion of the presentation included an overview of student papers versus professional papers, required elements of a student paper, heading levels, font, line spacing, margins, and paragraph indentation. Students also learned when to include in-text citations, how to format citations in the body of the paper, how to use direct quotations, and how to cite them. Following the instruction in this portion of the workshop, students were given an opportunity to practice formatting a parenthetical citation and a narrative citation. Lastly, students were given instruction and examples of how to construct a reference list.

A quantitative survey was utilized to assess students’ experience and confidence using APA format prior to and following the workshop. The questionnaire consisted of a total of 17 items; in addition to the aforementioned self-report items (experience and confidence), 12 questions from the Penn State University Libraries APA Style Quiz were included to objectively assess participants’ knowledge of the content presented. These 12 questions asked students to choose correct APA format from a list of four or five possible options (multiple choice). Permission for use of these items was granted by Penn State University Libraries via e-mail communication. A Likert scale (0–10) was used for the experience and confidence questions. Demographic information (year in the nursing program) was also obtained.

Institutional Review Board Approval

IRB approval (February 23, 2021) was granted prior to any research/workshops being conducted.

Statistical Analysis

Responses from participants were entered into Excel and exported into SPSS 25 for analysis. Descriptive statistics were run to evaluate students’ year in the nursing program and their confidence and knowledge of APA format. Four paired samples t -tests were performed to compare students’ pre- and post-responses to the following: confidence in ability to use APA format in a paper, confidence in ability to cite sources/references in a paper, overall knowledge of APA style, and total APA Style Quiz questions answered correctly.

Using a priori sample size calculation for a minimum total sample size required for a two-tailed hypothesis with a desired statistical power level of 0.8 and a probability level of 0.05, it was determined that the minimum sample size needed per group was 26 respondents ( Soper, 2023 ). In total, 49 participants took pre- and post-surveys on APA style knowledge and confidence during the spring 2021 semester. All 49 participants fully answered survey questions before and after the workshops, resulting in no missing data.

Association Between Interventions and Outcomes

Confidence using APA format was asked on a 0–10 scale. The mean pre-test score for the combined 49 participants was 4.65 (standard deviation [SD] = 2.269) whereas the post-test mean for the same question was 7.18 (SD = 1.845). The paired sample t statistic was 5.95 and the finding was significant at the p  < .001 level in a paired samples t -test. Confidence in using APA citations correctly was also asked on a 0–10 scale. The mean pre-test score was 5.78 (SD = 2.094) whereas the post-test score was 7.45 (SD = 1.815). This, too, was a significant finding at the p  < .001 level in a paired samples t -test ( t  = 4.22). Perceived knowledge (experience with APA) was asked on a 0–10 scale. The pre-test mean was 4.71 (SD = 1.958), and the post-test results were a mean of 7.18 (SD = 1.856); this finding was also significant ( t  = 6.39, p  < .001). Reliability for these items was established using a Cronbach's alpha in SPSS. At time 1 for these four questions, the Cronbach's alpha was 0.885, and at time 2 it was 0.898, indicating strong covariance between items and variance in the total score. The 12 questions that asked students to identify the correct APA format/citation out of four or five options was marked as either correct or incorrect. These questions were created by Pennsylvania State University to test student knowledge. Questions and answers can be accessed through the Penn State University Libraries APA Quick Citation Guide (2023) .

Prior to the workshop, students got an average of 8.06 questions correct (SD = 1.761), and after the workshop, students got an average of 9.35 questions correct (SD = 1.614). The paired sample t statistic was 3.79, and this finding was significant ( p  < .001). Cohen's d was used to measure effect size because groups at time 1 and time 2 have similar SDs and are of the same sample size. Cohen's d effect sizes are presented in Table 1 . All effect sizes are large with the exception of the APA style questions answered correctly at time 1 and time 2. This effect size is 0.76, and falls between a medium and large effect size. Therefore, the means at time 2 are all at least 0.76 SDs above what they were at time 1.

Paired Sample Means and t -Test of Improvement in APA Knowledge.

Note. p  < .05*, p  < .01**, p  < .001***

Findings from this research were statistically significant and indicate that a workshop approach can be used to improve student writing. Scores for experience, confidence, and ability to use APA format improved after the workshop compared to before the workshop. In programs where little time is available for written communication instruction, APA writing workshops may be the answer for busy faculty and students.

While the curriculum for nursing majors is demanding on both students and faculty, learning written communication is essential for long-term success of nursing students. We have bridged the gap between time and learning by offering APA format workshops to our students. Results indicate that students not only learned APA format during these workshops but also boosted their confidence related to writing using professional guidelines. When asked to identify correct APA format in 12 questions, participants got an average of 8.06 correct before the workshop and an average of 9.35 questions correct after the workshop. What is more impressive is how much confidence participants gained during the workshop. Faculty plan to develop topics for future writing workshops based on faculty and/or student-identified needs.

Lessons Learned

Prior to the workshops, nursing faculty were aware of gaps in students’ understanding of APA format. The data collected during these workshops showed that not only were students struggling with the technical aspects of APA format but also with their confidence in their ability to use APA format and citations correctly. A 1-hour workshop significantly improved students’ abilities and confidence in regards to APA format.

Strengths and Limitations

Nursing curricula are content-full and fast-paced, making it difficult to add information, that may or may not be addressed in general education classes, into courses. In alignment with findings from previous research ( Derouin et al., 2015 ), voluntary workshops improve students’ abilities to use APA and their confidence in using APA format and citations. The current study has two major limitations that can be addressed with future research. The sample size of this study was 49 students who self-selected into the writing workshop. Future research would benefit from a larger, randomized sample. Furthermore, the post-test survey was given only once immediately following the workshop. Future research would benefit from an additional post-test survey given several weeks after the workshop to see if students retained their knowledge. Even if specific ideas were not retained, the authors argue that building confidence in using APA format will help students overcome hurdles in future writing projects.

Implications for Practice

These research findings indicate that nurse educators can successfully incorporate writing instruction in the nursing curriculum utilizing a workshop format. This approach serves as an effective alternative to adding this important content to an already content-heavy course. Incorporating campus resources, such as the university Writing Center, can increase the benefits of such workshops to students.

Conclusions

While professional standards for nursing clearly argue that written communication is an essential competency needed for career success, previous research indicates that skill in written communication is something that nursing students struggle to ascertain ( Diehl, 2007 ; Troxler et al., 2011 ) and faculty struggle to teach given other demands ( Miller et al., 2015 ). Addressing this gap takes creativity and data-driven decisions. Our pilot study indicates that teaching workshops on APA formatting, while partnering with the university Writing Center, works to improve nursing students’ self-ranked experience and confidence of APA formatting and citations while also improving their ability to successfully identify proper APA citations and format.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Krystle Forlines, DNP, RN of Danville Community College for her contributions to this project.

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding: The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD: JoEllen Pederson https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6912-3269

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