Should you hire a nurse to write your health content? Yes, and here's why nurses make ideal health writers.
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I see you searching. You need health content written, and you think that just anyone will be able to write it for you. Have you thought about that?
When you have a question about your health, do you call your doctor’s office and speak to the nurse or go to the bank and ask a teller? The same applies to the product you need written. You need a nurse to write your health content and here's why.
7 reasons a nurse should write your health content
1. Trustworthy
Once again, the public has rated nurses as the most trusted and ethical profession in the United States. Nurses have held this title in the annual Gallup poll for over two decades.
In the latest poll, nurses ranked higher than physicians and pharmacists. Trusted, honest sources should write health content.
2. Knowledge seeker
When a person decides to become a nurse and enters a nursing program, they become a knowledge seeker.
With each new class, the student will write countless papers on new and exciting disease processes that the student must read, research, and synthesize their information into one cohesive, understandable finished product or presentation.
Once they start their clinical rotations, each new patient assignment repeats this process to prepare them for their clinical days to provide safe and competent patient care.
3. Continuing education
Once someone becomes a nurse, their learning doesn’t end once they graduate from their nursing program. To maintain their nursing license, a nurse must complete continuing education during each renewal period.
Each state’s Board of Nursing determines the number and type of continuing education credits. Nurses are continually expanding their knowledge bases through this continuing education. Nurses genuinely become lifelong learners!
4. Adaptable and flexible
To the layperson watching a nurse on the nightly television program, it may appear that nurses “just” take care of patients, give medications, change dressings, educate patients, and transport them to a test or procedure.
We all know that television is not reality! Nurses don’t have a typical day, but certain routines may be part of their daily work:
Assessments of patients
Administering medications
Drawing labs, reviewing labs, and possible implications
Changing dressings, assessing wounds
Communicating with other members of the healthcare team
Recommending care options to physicians or other healthcare team members
Educating the patient and the caregiver/family
Providing support to the patient and caregiver/family
Maintaining clear and accurate documentation of the patient’s care
These happen multiple times daily for each patient the nurse is caring for. Nurses develop fantastic time management skills.
They are constantly synthesizing data and adapting plans as needed. By practicing all these things, nurses develop critical thinking skills that help them to adapt and change their plans as needed.
5. Patient educator
Not only are the nurses educating themselves on new medications, diagnoses, and procedures, but they are also educating their patients and the patients' families and caregivers.
Once the patient leaves the hospital, the family will need to be able to change dressings, administer medications, and provide the support that their loved one has received while they were in the healthcare setting.
Without receiving education from the nurse, that would be a next-to-impossible task to complete.
6. Team player
In the healthcare environment, everyone has a voice. Nurses bring a wealth of knowledge to the table and can bring perspectives that others may not have thought of.
Nurses are open to feedback because they are accustomed to working in this environment.
7. Google Medic
Have you ever heard of Google Medic? In 2018, an update to the Google algorithm rated the quality of Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T) content on a page.
When medical content is written by those with appropriate medical expertise, such as a nurse, it has a better chance of being rated as “high” by the algorithm. A higher rating will generate more online traffic to your content.
What’s holding you back?
Nurses must complete a rigorous education process to become a practicing nurse. They learn to read research, synthesize data, and study disease processes, medications, and procedures.
Much of their job is to educate their patients about their medications, testing they will undergo, or new diagnoses they have just received. They can simplify the complex medical jargon so patients can understand the new material. Who better to write your health content than someone who does this daily?
Nurses must be flexible and adapt to their changing patients' needs. This flexibility and adaptability is what makes nurses excellent health writers and partners. Being adaptable enables nurse writers to understand client needs and priorities quickly.
Karyn Baioni is a registered nurse and freelance health writer. Read more about her at Steadfast Writing.
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