I interviewed Jennifer Fowlers, a physical therapist at
Performance Physical Therapy Group, to find out what a
physical therapist writes on a daily and weekly basis. She explained that
everyday she writes patient progress reports and patient evaluations. She said
that when she has a patient come into her office she has to note any new
medication the patient is on, any pain or discomfort the patient is feeling,
and any complaints the patient has with the exercises. She also described that
every week she has to write a treatment plan for the patient to follow over the
course of their recovery time. I found that the way a physical therapist writes
is very similar to the writing process I have experienced in my writing class. This
is because they also have to stay focused and organized while they are writing
in order to remember what they wrote on a patient’s report from the previous
week or month. The style of their writing can be considered scholarly because
they utilize many medical terms to describe the patient’s problem. They also
have to constantly revise what they write and make sure it is the correct
evaluation and treatment.
Reading your post I thought a lot about the connection between a physical therapist's writing and the form of writing for a Special Education teacher, and what I found was that they are somewhat similar. Just as a physical therapist writes progress reports so does a Special Education teacher. The process to a Special Needs child's "recovery" (using that term lightly) is something that is heavily documented just like a physical therapy patient's. Also, I really liked how you connected their style of writing to the previous prompted blog post regarding scholarly and non-scholarly writing. It's always very interesting to see the different forms of writing within not only your own personal field, but others' as well.
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