Prior to beginning my Masters in May 2018 I had no experience with APA. When I completed my Biology and Physical Therapy Bachelor\u2019s degrees 27 and 23 years ago respectively I was very familiar with writing lab reports, which is a form of scholarly writing. I cannot actually recall what style we were required to use for citations and references then.<\/p>\n
I have taken two MA courses so far, and right now I am so thankful for Professor Hyne-Ju Huizenga. Every week over the course of the 10 weeks of LDRS 617 she would provide invaluable feedback to my compendium submissions. It was rare that she recommended changes to the compendium content, but I learned so much from her regarding the use of APA style. I was surprised this week when I realized how much confidence I have gained from her patient, methodical teaching. My older daughters introduced me to the Purdue OWL Online Writing Lab, and that was another resource that I was referring to almost every week.<\/p>\n
As discussed previously, I am a health care leader and evidence based medicine is now the norm, not the exception. Though I am not involved in clinical research, I do have employees and colleagues who are, and we have many Masters of Physical Therapy students doing preceptorships in our department involved in clinical research. Being able to access and then apply current evidence in the clinical setting is the only way to best practice in medicine. So understanding scholarly writing at a clinical level is important.<\/p>\n
Scholarly writing is also important because there is a dire need for evidence based practice in health care management. Evidence is weaker, and there are challenges to sorting through valid, reliable, and applicable sources (Pfeffer & Sutton, 2006). Many managers retain old adages and myths and default to traditional styles of leadership when these behaviours and actions are no longer producing the intended outcomes; evidence supports this observation (Wakeman, 2013). The culture in Saskatchewan Health has changed, and using data and informal study is how decisions are made. With the transition to one provincial health authority in Dec 2017 there is a tremendous opportunity to introduce formal scholarly writing to drive evidence based decision making in management.<\/p>\n
Elements of APA I continue to struggle with are citing and referencing the resources that are different from the norm. Books and journal articles are straight-forward; websites, online news, personal communication, videos, etc are less familiar to me. I have struggled with formatting issues in the reference list when using lecture notes or some other source that includes a URL that is incredibly lengthy. I also struggle with how and where to include quotes in the sentence structure so it flows. But my biggest struggle is going to be my writing style. I think I have gone over the recommended word count for all my blog posts and compendiums in the last 2 courses. I am not confident in my ability to articulate my thoughts in the clear, direct, and concise method as outlined in the learning activities this week. My action plan to improve on these elements are to refer to the Purdue OWL Online Writing Lab on informal sources, re-read the APA manual (2010) links on writing style, and practice being more concise in all of my writing (including emails, reports, personal correspondence).<\/p>\n
Some questions that I have are: how often are informal sources cited in scholarly writing? If not often, is information on citing and referencing these sources something that can just be \u201clooked up\u201d on the rare occasions when it happens? How does a writer identify that they are too wordy, or too concise? (Follow up question: or is this the role of an editor?). I was instructed that the reference list for my last paper was also to be double spaced, but I note that references for the courses are not double spaced, nor were they in the quizzes – is this just because these references are not part of a formal submission? Is it appropriate and necessary to use references on blog posts? Should authors be using references on blog posts, or should this style of writing deliberately be more informal? Or does it depend on the audience?<\/p>\n
I look forward to the responses.<\/p>\n
References<\/p>\n
Pfeffer, J.& Sutton, R. I. (2006). Evidence-based management. Harvard \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Business Review<\/i>. Retrieved from https:\/\/hbr.org\/2006\/01\/evidence-based-management<\/p>\n
Wakeman, C. (2013). Close the door on what you think you know about\u00a0leadership. Information\u00a0Management Journal, 47<\/i>(2), 28-32.<\/p>\n
(P.S. \u00a0In light of this week\u2019s topic… I know that this is not how references are supposed to be formatted, but I cannot figure out how to get a hanging indent on this page. \u00a0Even though I copied and pasted from my Word document, it will not copy over the hanging indent, and I cannot figure out how format it on here. \u00a0I also don\u2019t understand why \u201cbold\u201d and \u201citalics\u201d will not paste over – WordPress take note. \u00a0Improvement idea!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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