Mallory Mobley
ENC 1210
Professor Dick
4/18/17
Word Count: 599
This technical writing
class has taught me several lessons throughout the course. All of the lessons
that I have learned will help me excel as a student and in my health field
career. The business writing techniques that I will be talking about today include
comparing and contrasting business and academic writing, strategies to increase
positive cross-cultural communication, and creating Microsoft PowerPoint slides
for effective presentations.
The first lesson I will
be talking about is the similarities and differences of business and academic
writing. In my previous classes, we completed
academic writing which includes essays, short answer, and short stories. In my
career with the medical field, I expect to write resumes, memos, letters, and
documents that record a patient’s history and physical examination. Academic
and business writing all require organization and critical thinking skills.
Whether I am patient’s vital signs or writing a letter to a co-worker, I will
still have to be organized and professional. However, these types of writing
are different.. The academic writing that I wrote in previous classes focused
on fiction and fantasy. My career will consist of realistic and practical
writings that focus on the patient and their health. Although the types of
writing are very distinct, they are both crucial to learn and apply in everyday
life.
The next lesson I have obtained from this course
is new strategies to increase positive cross-cultural communication. In the
medical field, you will be working with other medical staff, patients, and
their families who all come from different backgrounds. The strategy I will be
focusing on today is Tuckman’s four stages: forming, storming, norming, and
performing. These stages allow a team to obtain
good planning and communication while fostering creativity and sharing the
workload. In the medical field, I will be
using Tuckman’s four stages. When you first start a job, you are excited
and anxious to meet your medical co-workers. As the days go along, tensions
began to rise among other employees and it can get ugly. To solve this, you
should sit all of your co-workers down and compromise to achieve the mission:
providing the best quality care for the patients. Eventually, everyone will
begin to accept their roles and responsibilities in the “project”. If this
works, all of the workers are comfortable with their tasks and are able to
recognize the other workers strengths and weaknesses.
The last lesson that will benefit me
in the medical field is creating Microsoft PowerPoint slides for effective
presentations. Presenting information to the public is a crucial in the
education system and healthcare. There are options in PowerPoint that will
allow you to insert a header and footer. Headers should appear consistently
across the top of each slide and a footer should appear across the bottom of
the page. When choosing a font, use a minimum of a 36-point font for headings
and a minimum of a 24-point font for body text. Use lists instead of paragraphs
and sentences on slides. Also, adding graphics and icons will keep your slides
fresh for the audience. Graphics should reinforce the content, organization,
and style of your presentation. By learning how to properly create
PowerPoint slides for your presentation, you will succeed whether you are
starting your dream career or taking future courses.
There are many more lessons like the
ones I discussed above that can be applied in the classroom or the workplace.
Whether you are writing, communicating, or creating a PowerPoint, the
information listed above can assist you in achieving your goals. I am excited
to apply these lessons in my future career as a Nurse Practitioner.
Works Cited
Johnson-Sheehan,
Richard. Technical Communication Today. New York, NY: Longman, 2015. Print.
