I took the bull by the horns and sent a couple of articles off to a faculty member for review which have come back with very helpful feedback. One comment has left me wondering how to maintain a connection with the reader while removing references to "our" patients or how "we" practice... The recommendation is that the "we" and "our" always becomes "nurses" and that nurses are referred to as his/her or he/she rather than just she. I can understand the gender issue as there are men in nursing but writing he/she seems cumbersome! Regarding the issue of "our" patients, here is an example of one sentence where I think changing "our" to "the" distances nurse from the family they are (I am) working with: "I question if it is possible to provide ethical nursing care without having a relationship with our (the) patient's family, a relationship built on trust and compassion."
Any thoughts on this?
hmm...interesting...I can see your desire to not want to distance yourself from your patients...even in your writing (because you are such a warm fuzzy type :)).
ReplyDeleteIf I were to nit pick I would say that it sounds as if your sentence is referring to a specific patient that both you and I are caring for...otherwise shouldn't it be "our patients' families"?
When you say "we"...are you assuming that you and I are coming from a similar place? I sometimes read my union's magazine and am irked when they refer to "us" or "we". As a member of their union I suppose they "speak" for me (sigh), but as an individual I would prefer to have my own voice. I realize that it is somewhat different in a journal, however is there still that presumption of sameness if you use the terms "us", "we", etc.?