Lauren Quezada

Discourse community
Experimenting is very different for me I can say I am a very out there kind of
person when it comes to what I want to do and with what I know. As I continue on with
getting my education I feel limited to what I want to do with my life, I always want to do
something different but now I know not everything I wanted to do in life was for me. I
found myself shadowing a nurse, which I in fact thought I would never go into the
medical field. Now that is exactly what I want to do, which I still cannot believe.
Going into the medical field I thought was not for me, I grew up with surrounds
of doctors and nurses who always talked different terminology to me which I did not
understand and thought they are crazy what are they even saying. My mom is a nurse and
when she went to nursing school I was always there helping her study, pretending I knew
what she was saying and telling me with all those piles of books and some gross
pictures of bodies, I always said to myself that is to much reading and to many big words
for me to understand. Now I see myself wanting to see those gross pictures and do
some more investigating on those big words I once did not understand. Going into the
nursing I did some research.
A discourse community is groups that have goals or purposes, and use
communication to achieve these goals". Says John Swales. When doing research I figured
I would follow the concepts and rules John Swales uses, I have read and learned what a
discourse community was because of him. John swales was a dry person but got right into
the point of what he wanted hes readers to know. He explained a discourse community
into sections; discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals.
These public goals may be formally inscribed in documents (as is often the case with
associations and clubs), or they may be more tacit. (John swales). I can say that I can
prove that type of discourse community with nursing. I soon realized I should prove
myself and understand what communication is use to communicate around a nursing
environment. I shadowed a nurse from the NICU, which is the neonatal intensive care
unit. I thought that unit would be best for me to shadow since I want to work as an
intensive care nurse. I shadowed the nurse around the unit for about two and a half hours
I asked questions and just followed them and researched what they were doing.
When shadowing the nurses I noticed they are always on the go. These nurses
always have something they are doing or someone they are talking to, I shadowed this
nurse named Mrs. Mata I know she was busy so I did nit want to hover over her I stayed
back and just studied what she was doing for an hour that she was really busy at that time
I saw so much, she only had three patients but those three patients she took care of were
very intensely sic babies. She had two under incubators, which you constantly had to be
watching over and the other one was just there for feedings. When I was studying her I
realized she was charting down everything she did to her patients specifically, she would
write times down next to everything she would do to them and she would write their
condition and what she used on them and how she did whatever she would do to them in
which way. Her chart writing was very specific and in order by time. When I was
studying her I thought wow she is an organized person but as I was looking at the other
nurses I realized she was not the only one that neat and specific and that is how everyone
was writing down their charts. So in their community they have to be really specific and
persist they cannot let anything slide through or get a time wrong because it can really
affect the patient later on.
When the hour passed Mrs. Mata had a little free time for me to get into
discussion with her and for me to start asking her questions about the discourse
community she works for. My first question to her and two other nursing working there
was do you enjoy what you do? And why do you do it? it came to a surprise to me that
this question was answered the same by all three of them, they all loved what they did
and they loved doing it so much because of the satisfaction they get when helping out a
little one and watching them grow. My questions to Mrs. Mata went out like this
identify the forum by name and affiliation? How large is the forum and who are the
members? its leaders and readership?. The form they used was a specialized flow sheet
adaptive to patient care; the organization affiliation would be the Tenet health care
corporation. The forum for patient care runs about 5-6 pages; the members of this forum
would be the patients, all the health care team members who give patient care. The
leaders for this forum would be al the health care professionals and the readership is all
the healthcare team involved. In what manner does the forum assemble? The forum
assembles for a group of professionals who take care of the patients. How frequently?
on a daily basis, different health professions are always checking and making changes to
the specialized flow sheet. What types of discourse does this forum admit? this forum
admits the discourse of patient information and instructions given. Technical or
specialized jargon? Abbreviations? the specialized jargon would be the medical
terminology and Abbreviations are used in some occasions. Depending on what it is.
Tone? The tone used is proper nothing to major just a straightforward tone. The
audience is other medical professions that know medical terminology so nothing is out of
the ordinary or different for them. These questions helped me understand her
environment and work care around her community. Getting deeper into the discussion
about her discourse community I asked more questions.
What are the shared goals of community? the shared goals of the community
were education, providing recourses for example financial help. For counseling and
rehabilitation. Why does this group exist and what does it do? this group exists to help
patients financially and physically they are a team who does their job. What mechanism
do members use to communicate? non verbal communication (hand gestures, hand
signals) they also use verbal communication (talking to peers) as I studied the nurses I
noticed that they do use a lot of hand gestures and hand signals to communicate with each
other. This was interesting to me because going in there I did not know about that
communication they used. What are the purpose of the mechanisms? the purpose of
these mechanisms is to be able to provide positive feedback. When studying the nurses
and watching them do their job I knew it must not be easy to tell a patients parent any
negative or unsupported feedback, these nurses are working in an environment where
they cannot tell their patients what is going on with them so they have to break it down to
the patients source which in this case would be the babies parents, seeing that majority of
the parents in their were very young or a new first time parent so this is extremely
difficult to the nurses in a way that they need to know how to break information down to
them I studied how the nurses provide feedback to the parents of the patients and it is
kind of different when the parents are younger and probably less wiser they tend to baby
the feedback to them meaning they will tell them what they have to do and how to do it
giving them minimal options, which is different to an older maybe a little bit wiser of a
parent with these parents the feedback they give them is the reality feedback and trying to
maybe find sources to help them depending on how the case of the patient is.
What specialized language is used? the specialized language used is medical
terminology. Who has expertise? All the professions involved in the work place which
in this case would be Tent health working team. Who are the Newcomers? the
newcomers are new team members who have entered the health care team. How do
newcomers learn appropriate language genres, knowledge? the newcomers learn
appropriate language genres and knowledge by getting educated in the profession (pre-
septing and teaching). When all my questions where finally answered and my studding
was done with, I saw that this discourse community has mechanisms of
intercommunication among its members. All these team members engage in a verity of
ways of communication and still understand each other.
When doing research about nursing and the medical profession I did not know
what kind of discourse community followed behind it. Shadowing nurse Mata and the
rest of her team really helped me out I found information I did not even know about in
ways that the medical professions communicated and what they were even saying. The
goals I wanted to achieve with this research and study I did followed through to me, I
understand now what discourse community is in the nursing profession and what
communication and writing abilities are used. When studying the nurses and looking over
to what they call charts my goal of finding the discourse community and types of
communication being used around the working environment came clear to me and helped
me achieve my goal.