Writing for Today’s Healthcare Audiences – Second Edition

This reorganized and updated edition of Writing for Today’s Healthcare Audiences provides new digital supports for students and course instructors. Designed primarily for students seeking careers in healthcare communication, this book also serves as a useful guide for nascent practitioners. Healthcare writing audiences are diversifying, from traditional physicians and patients to administrators in government and insurance groups and to technical practitioners in a widening range of fields. Writing for these increasingly diverse healthcare audiences is the focus of this book, which has just enough theory to lay groundwork, plentiful examples to illustrate how theory is practiced, summaries that highlight key points, and realistic practice exercises. The second edition has been reorganized and expanded; new examples throughout refer to the special challenges of healthcare writing in a pandemic. A new companion website for students and general readers provides larger-scale examples by audience, more details on the review and revision processes, and communications skills toolkits; a separate site provides support for instructors planning courses around the book. Comments Praise for the first edition “Robert J. Bonk, the noted authority on writing in the pharmaceutical industry, provides highly useful and sensible coverage of what writers need to know to craft texts within a range of healthcare professions. In concise chapters that make good use of sample documents from many medical contexts, Bonk relies on a solid rhetorical underpinning to encourage writers to be alert to the importance of purpose, audience, and genre in designing medical documents. He covers the practicalities of researching and writing from medical sources, and he offers advice on designing both documents and their accompanying visuals. Bonk’s book should prove popular on many campuses in the growing number of undergraduate courses in healthcare communication.” — Stephen A. Bernhardt, University of Delaware (retired) “I particularly value Bonk’s attention to the different kinds of potential audiences for healthcare information, the purposes the writing might need to serve, and the ethics involved in presenting such material. Putting ethics right up front, then showing how those ethics apply (even at the beginning of the process when you are selecting sources of information), is an essential part of becoming an effective healthcare writer. This book is also notable for how well it integrates the mechanics of clear communication with real-world examples of texts healthcare writers need to produce.” — Lili Fox Vélez, Scientific Writer and Editor