Constructing Writing Practices in Nursing

Although the quality of student writing is often lamented by faculty, writing instruction is an area of nursing education that has received little attention. Nursing programs rarely teach writing from a disciplinary perspective, and promoting the drilling of basic skills, such as grammar, has failed to engage student writers.

A critical examination of the history of writing research, the nursing academic context, and the epistemology of writing as meaning making will provide the rationale behind a need for a new perspective on nurses' writing.

A model to support socially constructed writing is proposed, which explores the writer's identity, relational aspects of writing, creative and emotional knowing, and the writing context.

This article continues the conversation about re-visioning and enhancing the value of writing within the nursing profession. The knowledge created while writing can contribute to stimulating thinking, decision making in practice, and identity formation of nurses. [J Nurs Educ. 2018;57(7):399-407.].