All of It Counts
Start With This
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
— Maya Angelou, poet and memoirist
Something Worth Knowing
Health literacy is now recognized as a core skill of professional nursing practice, and a 2023 scoping review in Frontiers in Public Health found that nurses' support for patient health literacy has a measurable impact on patients' ability to obtain, comprehend, and apply health information to their own behavior.
Translation: the patient education work nurses do every shift is the same skill set health writers get paid to deploy on the page. The institution rarely flags it as a professional-grade skill. The market does.
A Good Read
If the sentence "I'm not a writer" has ever crossed your lips, today's post is going to make you reconsider.
There are four nursing skills you've been doing under pressure, with stakes, with real audiences, for years. Editors and content managers pay good money for every one of them. The institution just never told you they counted.
Read: Why Nurses Make Better Writers Than They Think
One Small Step
Try this small inventory exercise this week. The point is recognition, not action.
- Where in my last week of clinical work did I do the actual job of a health writer (translating, structuring, explaining for a specific reader)?
- Which of my nursing skills has nobody ever called a professional skill, even though I rely on it every shift?
- What would change in how I describe myself if I started counting those skills as writing skills?
Beth's Sunday Rounds
On Sundays, I write a longer essay for readers who want one. This week’s 5-minute read:
There were 19 tasks on my list. The one I worked on wasn't any of them.
Read: Gear Tax
Take This With You
You've been doing the work of a health writer for years. Nobody put a price on it. The market does.
