Writing for Publication

Summary of the article

In “Writing for publication: Sharing your clinical knowledge and skills”, Wood (2018)
argues that nurses gather a lot of new evidence in the course of their practice and research at
work. They use this evidence in implementing projects that help staff, patients, and their
communities. However, they rarely publish this evidence. The lack of publication means that
their knowledge is not shared with other nurses internationally for the benefit of patients and
nursing staff. The three main reasons given for reluctance of nurses to publish the knowledge
they gather is lack of time, lack of confidence, and inadequate support at their workplace. To
encourage nurses to publish more new knowledge they obtain through practice and research, the
article provides various tips that simplify and clarify the process of writing for journal
publication (Woods, 2018, p. 20-23).

Paraphrasing

Unlike nurses in academia, practicing nurses do not view publication of their knowledge
as a professional responsibility (Woods, 2018, p.20). This is unfortunate because practicing
nurses have valuable knowledge on best nursing practices that are supported by evidence which
can be useful to other nurses worldwide when shared (Woods, 2018, p. 20). In addition, sharing
this knowledge through writing in various nursing publications is important for its revalidation
(Woods, 2018, p. 20). It is also worth noting that there are many nursing journals that may target
clinical nursing staff as their primary audience. For these journals, their articles will be relevant

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to their audience if they are written by practicing nurses (Woods, 2018, p. 21). This is another
reason for nurses publishing articles.

Direct Quotation

The writing process involves three main steps. The first one is choosing the subject. As
Wood advices, “The best subject to write about is one you have experience of.” (Woods, 2018, p.
22). Second step is choosing the journal that your article will be published in. Before making a
choice it is important that you familiarize yourself with writings of different journals. Such
familiarization “helps to gain an idea of the style of the writing, the technical detail and the
length of articles that are published (Wood, 2018, p. 21). Lastly, you need to be clear about the
kind of audience that you are writing for. As Wood notes, “Deciding who you are writing for and
why will help you to keep a clear focus” (Wood, 2018, p. 22).

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References

Wood, C. (2018). Writing for publication: Sharing your clinical knowledge and skills. British
journal of community nursing, 23(1), 20-23.