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Published Online:https://doi.org/10.3928/01484834-20180618-04Cited by:8

Abstract

Background:

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.

Method:

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.

Results:

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.

Conclusion:

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.]

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