TECHNICAL WRITING AS A DIETITIAN

Welcome back, all! I hope you had an awesome holiday weekend if you celebrated!  Today we will be discussing something I feel is extremely important in our career: writing instructions.  As dietitians, we will be writing instructions and directions to our patients about how to cook healthy meals, make healthier choices, and give informational content about why foods do or do not work in their diet. Let's take a closer look. Like most technical documents, we must consider our audience. Are we making instructions for a 16-year-old athlete? Or are we creating a meal plan for a 30-year old breastfeeding mother? We would use easier terminology for the teenage girl so that it is easy for her to comprehend the instructions.  We should also take into consideration the ethnicity of our patients'. Do they speak a different language? If so, we need to translate our instructions for them to be able to read it. 

Greetings readers! For this week’s post, I am going to share information from an academic journal article I read, Caffeinated Energy Drinks Improve High-Speed Running in Elite Field Hockey Players . As dietitians, we will be utilizing and applying information from academic journals into our studies, which is why it is vital to comprehend the information written in them. Although it is challenging to do so, the information I acquired was intriguing since it had to do with athletes and supplements. Let's take a closer look at the content I read about.    Introduction The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of a caffeine-containing energy drink to improve physical performance (distance, acceleration, heart rate) of elite field hockey players during a game. Recent studies show that the use of caffeinated beverages enhances movement patterns of several team sports such as basketball, volleyball, and tennis. Therefore, this experiment was designe...

Welcome back, crew! Today we will be talking about proposals. And no, I’m not talking about marriage proposals. I’m talking about professional, technical writing proposals. What is a Proposal? To start, you might be wondering, what exactly is a proposal? A proposal is a document that offers to carry out research to provide a product or a service. As dietitians, we may write a proposal to a supplement company testing their products on our patients (who are athletes) and their effects on performance. How to Write a Proposal When writing proposals, we must apply concepts of planning, drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading, as we learned in an earlier post of mine. In internal proposals, which is what we would write as dietitians, you must include the following sections : Memo In a professional proposal, authors use memos to introduce their letters. Memos are used for more brief documents. Purpose They then include the purpose of the proposal,...

Welcome back to my YouTube Channel! HA, just kidding, we are here again to discuss technical writing.  Buckle up, ladies and gents. You’re in for a ride. Tonight, we will be reviewing all I have learned when it comes to correspondence. Which form do we use? When do we know when which form of correspondence is appropriate? Do not fear, I will answer all of your questions. Selecting a Type of Correspondence The four main types of correspondences include: 1. Letters 2. Memos 3. Emails 4. Microblog posts As dietitians, we would use a letter when communicating with organizations outside of our practice, such as the American Heart Association (on the topic of diabetes). We would use a memo when communicating with people in our own organization as it is moderately formal. Even though there may be a level of comfort with your coworkers, it is vital that you still present yourself in a professional manner because you never know who may read your email. Unfor...