Tobin 1 Sam Tobin English 1102 03/26/2013 Memo This project was written as a letter, from the perspective

of the doctor being interviewed in the article used for research. The context of the letter is about the medical field using non-traditional practices for keeping in touch with their patients. The audience is health care professionals, and the purpose is to show how much better the health care system could be for the patients if doctors used these methods. I chose a letter as the genre for the project because I felt it would make the most sense when writing. Link to article: http://www.kctv5.com/story/21190143/pediatrician CAP Project To all health care physicians, Have you ever thought about how our job impacts out patients when we are not at the office? As a physician, our job does not stop when we turn the lights off at the office at night. We have a responsibility to care of our patients all the time. With the social media scene here at our disposal, I believe as caring physicians we should be using this to our advantage. This would allow our patients and their parents and or guardians to contact us when we are out of the office for direct answers. Allowing us to become more personal with ourpatients and I believe it would be beneficial to them, especially the younger ones. It brings me great joy to have patients and their parents be able to rely on me out of the office and be able to give them advice over the
Comment [BC2]: What is this? Comment [BC1]: -- No name in filename -- Revisit the handout on Moodle for the correct format for an MLA-style document.

Tobin 2 internet. "It makes my heart sing when a mom comes in and says, 'Hey, I read that blog post you put up last week and that advice, it worked (Social media par. 4). Using different forms of social media to better our relationships with our patients is a no brainer, and in my opinion, we as health care professionals need to do our part to better the image of the health care community by better connecting with our patients. It has been common practice to go to work, do your job, go home, and leave work at work. In the world of heath care it is not that simple, once our patients leave the office and go home, they are still in need of our care. It is not enough to just have them leave a message at our office, or send an email for us to get when we get back into the office in the morning. If we allow our patients to contact us via a form of social media it would make contact less formal, allowing the patients and their family to be more comfortable with the situation. It also helps us as health care providers because we are able to respond to our patients when they need help the most instead of them resorting to internet advice from others. The downside to allowing patients and their parents to contact us via social media is the readiness of responses. They need to understand that we are not sitting by our computers all day long waiting to give someone a response. Social media is a great way to reach out when they have questions, but would not take the place in an emergency. As health care providers I also understand that we have very hectic lives and enjoy the time we get to spend with our own families. You should not neglect your loved ones in order to post a blog or respond to a comment. Set times aside to check, and if needed, respond to questions your patients have. As members of the health care organization it is our responsibility to give the utmost care to those who come to us in need. Our patients come to us with confidence that we will be able to
Comment [BC3]: Only use the title when there is no author.

Tobin 3 help no matter what the circumstance, and it is my belief that we should all, if we do not already, care so deeply about our patients that we would be willing to do just about anything to help them. Social media is a very real thing in the world as we know it, and it can affect us in many different ways. I encourage all of you to try and make an attempt to better your relationships with your patients through the use of social media. Allow yourself to be open to new ideas about our ever changing health care system. If we do not evolve with the world then what good is the world evolving? We need to be able to keep up with our patients because sometimes they move faster than we do with technological advances. I believe this is our opportunity to show them that we do care, and to provide the best care possible for them.
Comment [BC4]: If this is a letter, who is it from? Comment [BC5]: Sam, While this is a very well-written letter, in order to be an expert voice in this field, youll need to be sure you are up on the current conversation and that you show how you are by giving examples and referencing other sources. One source to discuss this idea is not nearly enough, and this letter is very general for having worked with this topic for a few months. As you look to revise, I would suggest that you work to engage more sources by giving examples from them and showing proof that this system can and will work, and that it should be implemented. If this is a doctor writing to other doctors, he wont simply appeal to their good-natured personalities. He will try to appeal as best he can to their ethics, showing, rather than simply telling, that this works. Let me know if youd like help wit h where you can implement these specifics. Im looking forward to seeing how youll strengthen your work for the portfolio! -Ms. C

Tobin 4 Works Cited Mark, Brendan. "Social Media Helps Kansas City Pediatrician Connect to Patients - KCTV5." Social Media Helps Kansas City Pediatrician Connect to Patients - KCTV5. N.p., 15 Feb. 2013. Web. 03 Apr. 2013.
Comment [BC6]: It is a bit difficult to come across as an expert in the field if you are using only one article to discuss your ideas.

Tobin 5 Pre-writing What is the purpose of your piece? What information do you need in order to fulfill this purpose? -The purpose of this piece is to help health care professionals realize that there are other types of ways to connect with their patients. The information needed is more subjective, I feel like the topic is more of a emotional one more than factual. Read over the piece you are responding to. Is there anything in that piece that you do not understand, or anything that you would need to look up in order to fully understand? What more do you need to research in order to speak more intelligently about this subject? -There isnt really anything I did not understand however, I think personal experience in and out of doctors offices and hospitals has helped me understand the topic better. Consider how this piece came about. If you know that this piece stemmed from a true event, what more about the event do you need to know? If you havent found a piece or event that this piece stemmed from, what do you need to research to know for sure that this article was not intentionally part of a fuller conversation? Even if this piece didnt come out of a specific event, from what you know of your subject, what might it be responding to? What else would you need to know to understand this full-circle? -I dont think this piece came from anything more than a doctor using social media to help her patients. The bigger conversation could be the hesitation of health care professionals wanting to use social media but not knowing how to attempt it. Read over your proposal. Consider what you said youd mention in your piece. In order to do this, what do you need to research? -I think in order to fulfill this I need to have a better understanding or the mentality of health care professionals. Read over your introduction. What do you need to research in order to deliver what you promised in your intro? -The mentality of health care professionals. Consider both your intended audience and your unintended audience. o Intended audience:Health care professionals. What are their interests? What will they gravitate toward in a piece? What do you need to research or do in order to captivate this audience? o Unintended audience: Patients that could be frusterated with the health care system. There are always unintended audience members looking onto a piece. Who might these people be, and what might they expect from this piece? What do you need to research or include so that they will be able to interact with the piece as well? Unintended audience members may also be those who have written about the subject before, those with dominant opinions, or those who have some sort of stake in the discussion. (Ex: If you are writing to Ralph Horowitz, unintended audience members, yet interested parties might include the Gardens farmers or even Juanita Tate and the concerned Citizens Council.) In order to fulfill the context and audience components of this assignment, have you looked at examples? If you are placing this article in the New York Times, what do you need to know about this newspaper and who reads it in order to fulfill the CAP components?