Hepburn 1

Jennifer Hepburn
Point-of-view, audience, and purpose
Point-of-view
Ann had broken her shoulder. A special sling immobilized her arm to allow her
shoulder to heal, but it also prevented her from using her walker. Ann would be wheelchair bound for four weeks and we, her caregivers, would need to assist her to the
bathroom, dining room, and shower, but with fifteen other residents under our care, we
could hardly be at any one residents beck and call. Ann would always spend most of
second shift in bed, but she, like all of all residents, had Dementia and would often
forget her broken shoulder and try to get up on her own. In an effort to prevent her
falling, a baby monitor was put in her room and she was encouraged to call for help
getting out of bed. A very simple solution. It soon become a source of resentment and
lots of documentation.
In Anns world, we became personal attendants to her royal person. We were
summoned constantly. We were summoned to pick berries for invisible children, to
discuss last evenings events, and we were summoned only to be asked by a puzzled
Ann why are we here in her room? Help became Anns mantra, she would often drift
in and out of sleep murmuring help not realizing the onus it placed on the caregivers.
Her persistence was astonishing, no sooner had we left her room then Anns mantra
would resume. We began sneaking peaks in on her rather than making our presence
known to her, we had too many other people and duties to attend.

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Visitors would become concerned and uncomfortable listening to Anns constant
help causing us to become the target of many judgmental stares. These judgmental
eyes found the director and shared their judgmental view. To prove that we were not
neglecting our Ann, we were told to document every summon-the time, what Ann
needed or said, and what actions we performed. We soon had a clipboard filled with
times and short phrases, like-assisted to toilet, fixed blankets, talked, and if anyone
cared to continue reading, somewhere, after many days of this, we found our muse in
Ann. Entries appeared-took children to swim lessons-nobody drowned, picked berries
and hemlock for pies, girl talk in ladies room-with a less than professional tone, but
infinitely more accurate.
I did not realize our entries reflected a point-of-view, they were simply a release
valve to a tedious situation. In my Introduction to English Studies course (3000), I
learned the foundations of analyzing a text to see the authors and the narrators pointsof-view and developed my writing skills by learning about audience expectations. As a
class, we wrote a response to various articles and books for every class. Our readings
included theoretical works from Judith Butler and Michel Foucault to challenging articles
and novels such as Charles Bukowskis Ham On Rye and an excerpt from Gloria E.
Anzaldas La Frontera. The pace of writing three responses a week really helped my
writing and reading skills. I did not have time to read the materials more than once and
so I had to learn to read closely and quickly while developing my interpretation, point-ofview, and understanding of the text. I honestly do not think I had ever writing so much in
my life as I did that semester; I was also taking an American Literary Survey and
Intermediate Composition. I am not a good or talented writer, I tested below college

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level writing when I began at UC Blue Ash, but I enjoyed English classes. Through the
pace of this class and semester, the exposure to different text, and learning about
readers expectations and assumptions, I think my writing has improved. My writing
used to be like a lonely helium balloon-full of nothing and drifting aimless into space, but
it began to have some direction after this course. When I write, I try to be mindful of
providing context to the reader, creating transitions between ideas, and using structure
(paragraphs! I never used them before this class) to help organize a piece. For my
Eportfolio, I included my midterm essay on Bukowskis Ham On Rye, because I feel this
piece shows my awareness of readers expectations, it has decent organization, is
balanced between summary and original content, and I was really pleased with because
I initially hated this book.
As Anns caregivers, our documentation of her summons came from our point-ofview, one that reflected our knowledge that Anns cries of help were really a soothing
habit for her dementia mind and reflected her wonderful sense of humor. We did not
think of the reader; our entries did not provide a context or background and without this,
the reader would not have been able to understand our tone or purpose.
Audience
Each resident has a book containing all their medical records, care, dietary
requirements, monthly vitals, and legal papers. Caregivers document changes in habits
or personality, falls and injuries, and a three day baseline report is done for new
residents or if a resident is returning to our care after being hospitalized. These books
are legal documents inspected by the state medical board yearly. If an error is made,
the word or line is crossed out by one line and the writer initials the line because nothing

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can be removed from a residents records. Entries are facts, no conclusions, inferences,
or judgements. Health care jargon is used including a special short hand-arrows for up
or down, a circled L or R for left and right, and others. It takes a lot of intention to
write like that because we want to fill in the blanks, we want to draw a whole picture,
and it takes restraint to state bare facts. This form of writing serves a purpose in caring
for residents; good observation and documentation can help residents get medical help
for hallucinations, depression, or get testing for possible allergies or infections.
I learned about writing with a purpose in Desktop Publishing (3070) which
focused on creating client and print based documents with digital technologies and
Introduction to Rhetoric and Professional Writing (3059) where we explored rhetorical
principles through reading, analyzing, and producing different documents. Visual design
is the bane of my writing existence and technology, well lets just say I was, and still am,
quite behind the times. In Desktop Publishing we created a poster advertising a
childrens event in Adobe InDesign, a movie poster in Adobe Photoshop, a business
card and logo in Adobe Illustrator. My saving grace was access to the graduate lab on
the third floor, I lived there. I would not say anything I created was in any way good,
however, it was and is really important to learn about document design. I had never
pondered why a tri-fold style was chosen for a brochure, or why a logo was blue or
green. I really enjoy examining linguistic choices, but visual elements are a complete
blind spot for me. I think the biggest improvement I made as a student in this class is a
better appreciation of how an audiences reads documents. I learned that people usually
scan documents in a Z pattern and search for the information they place importance
on, not necessarily what the authors want especially if the document is produced

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without this knowledge in mind. For my Eportfolio, I included my poster for a childrens
event for Desktop Publishing and my educational flyer defining a rhetorical term from
Introduction to Rhetoric and Professional Writing. I like my content on the flyer, but my
design is too busy and, more importantly, it does nothing to support or add to the
content. I like everything about my poster, however, because of the ridiculous amount of
time it took for me to make it with InDesign, prevents me from calling it a success.
Visual design, including format and consistency, is important in every document,
even one as economical and restricted as the residents medical records. Design can
help readers learn to read a text by utilizing known reading habits, using consistent form
(fonts, margins, headers) and reinforcing the readers expectations by rewarding them
with information. The medical books had a consistent form: each book had left margin
entries with the date in day/month/year form followed by the entry and ending with the
writers initials. Legal waivers and medical charts were found in a specific order before
the caregivers entries. After leafing through a residents book, anyone would become
familiar with the construction and format of the book and gain the literacy to read and
document in it.
Purpose
Dementia residents get what is known as sundowners, as the day becomes
evening, the patients feel uneasy, they may not know why, but some part of them
realizes they are not home. Janet had sundowners, everyday starting at four pm, she
would begin to ask to use the phone to call her parents to pick her up-every ten
minutes. To complicate matters, she was hard of hearing. Visitors would hear caregivers
yelling at Janet, leading to complaints about our care. My solution was to write a letter

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to her-a phone message-youre parents have called, everyone is well, but they want
you to stay here tonight while they visit an out-of-town friend, your room is #23,
everything is paid for and they will help you pack when they come to pick you up in the
morning. It was like a charm, no yelling, no repeating endlessly, and having a physical
note seem to even comfort Janet. Sometimes the note underwent revision, a note for
bath night, a note to include her husband, children, grandchildren, whoever she
expressed concern for. I felt triumphant, my solution calmed Janets anxieties and
eliminated a persistent tension for second shift caregivers. I felt triumphant until one
day, as I was cleaning Janets room, I found a stack of every note we wrote her. I knew
the notes were the best solution we had, but still the stack represented our fraud, our
therapeutic lies, and our inability to end Janets anxiety. The notes were written for a
purpose, to calm Janet and free the caregivers to focus on other tasks. However, Janet
would not reading the note ten minutes later and would never be relieved of her
anxieties for those she loved.
All writing serves a purpose. The purpose determines the medium, tone, and
language used to deliver the message. I learned to tailor my writing to a specific
purpose in Writing for Business (4091) and in Rhetoric and Professional Writing
Capstone (5095). In Writing for Business, we were given mock scenarios that needed to
be addressed through conventional business communication, such as grants, proposal,
and negative announcements. The scenarios were presented with an over-abundance
of information and negativity in an inappropriate tone for business. This required the
students to translate the scenario into a forward-positive message with an appropriate
tone, format, and medium. Just like our notes to Janet, the writer made choices of what

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facts to share and how to present them to accomplish a purpose. I really enjoyed this
class, I liked writing within the conventions of business and having the scenario content
to organize and translate. If there was a Business Writing II, I would gladly take it. I
need to improve my introductions and closings. I tend to either be too wordy getting to
the topic or too sparse in explaining the topic. This is very typically for me to write
extremely one way or another, but with practice, I should be able to improve.
I was fortunate to work in a great group for our Rhetoric and Professional Writing
Capstone. Our project was to develop internal communications for Creating Healthy
Communities Coalition (CHCC). We created a case study based on their data for the
community of Evanston, an internal communication strategy guide, and a style guide. I
loved this project. I learned a lot, thanks to my teammates and google. I googled
everything for examples and help. I read all the material from CHCC and Cincinnati
health Department, I read everything on their web pages. I really liked immersing myself
in their language culture and using that to write the case study and the internal
communication plan. I think this shows that Im not so hot on content creation, but I think
I can understand different genres and organize lots of minutia. My partners, Jacob
Wilhelm and David Morgan are very smart and talented writers. Everything was a
collaboration, except the style guide, David created this on his own. He proof read every
document and researched and created a master contact list. David has a great eye for
details. Jacob worked on the document design and internal communication content, he
has great instincts in page design. Like caring for dementia patients, it takes teamwork
and I was fortunate to be on a team that truly collaborated.

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Ill never be a good writer, but I really have improved and grown over my college
career. College gave me an invaluable opportunity to develop as a writer through
constructive feedback from my peer and instructors.