Van Pelt 1

Jake Van Pelt

Megan Keaton
ENC 2135
25 July 2016
Genres within the Medical Field
The Medical field is a diverse field of varying specialties of documents. Each type of
document has its own unique purpose and a set of factors or genre conventions that help
distinguish it from the others. The documents that I shall be referring to are patient records,
emails between practitioner and patient, and medical research papers. With each of these genres
having a different audience for the most part, the genre conventions of each shall be quite
unique.
When a practitioner accepts a patient, one of the first priorities for them is to gain any
background information about them that may help explain their current disposition, what they
may be susceptible to, or just the general facts about them like their blood type which is crucial
should a blood transfusion need to be performed (citation needs to be added). The genre
conventions of patients records are fairly straight forward with regard to the main idea of their
purpose which is to convey necessary information in concise manner, be factual in approach
without much subjective opinion, and be multimodal in how statistics are to be included as well.
The necessary information can be a bit more open ended with regards to minor issues like a
small cut or bruise, being dependent upon who is taking the notes. The report should not be
extraneous in the sheer amount of information compared to the standard as this often yields

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negative reactions from other healthcare professionals who may choose to skim over the report
as opposed to properly reading it word for word due to how unnecessarily elaborative the report
is. (citation needs to be added) Once the report has been received or established, the medical
treatment may proceed. This then involves another genre with in the medical community.
The creation of email has provided the medical community an invaluable assert in
keeping the practitioner and patient in contact. When a surgery or procedure needs to be done
following a conclusive examination, the patient must be notified about what is to follow and
must also give their consent regarding who can receive the information from the procedure
(citation needs to be added). Additionally, emails are useful in how they enable practitioners to
be able to inform their patient about a something like an appointment or about what needs to be
discussed without the need for a face to face meeting, phone call, or an immediate response
(citation needs to be added). The genre conventions of emails are that like letters, they should
include a formal addressing of the recipient to begin and end with a closing. Other conventions
are that they should directly reference the patient and be written almost as though the author is
having a monologue with them. Once communication between the practitioner and patient has
been established, and consent to publish information relating to their health conditions or
procedures has been given, then the third genre of the medical field is used, medical research
papers.
Medical research papers are ultimately one of the key factors to progressing medical
technology and understanding (citation needs to be added). They are written by evaluating the
results of procedures, patient histories, and by considering statistics that have shown a pattern of
any sort. Some of the prominent genre conventions of medical research papers are that they are

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written with an observant perspective or are trying to argue the truth or inaccuracy of something
(citation needs to be added). Additionally, they contain facts from previous research cases or
statistics from large databases related to the subject of research. With the papers purpose being
scientifically prove a point, it needs to contain as little subjective thought or information as
possible as too much could make the paper unacceptably biased and hence would seem more like
it was written by a lawyer than someone who is a believer in scientific fact.

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Works Citied