Undergraduate Writing:

Body Paragraph Sample B

A strategy that nursing should use to help in the effort to reduce health care cost inflation is quality improvement in the form of prevention. This prevention onus is on every nurse for eliminating all potential for injury due to medication errors. A truly comprehensive improvement program for medication error prevention can also reduce the risk of malpractice (Becher, 2001). Evidence is clear, as seen in integrated care delivery systems, that reducing medication error injuries has dramatically affected quality outcomes. Strategies for such improvement are most effective if each nurse takes on the personal responsibility to work and provide care with utmost ethics and safety. Mandatory continuing education and regular skills checks and updates in places of employment help nurses to keep functioning based on the safest and best standards.

The Writing Center’s Response: Again, the student establishes the paragraph’s focus—in this case, prevention of medication errors—with an initial topic sentence. Each subsequent sentence connects to that central topic, explaining first how error prevention helps and then how the nursing staff can achieve the goal. The information on malpractice and outcomes hooks readers by telling them why error prevention is important. These sentences answer the “So what? Why should I care about this issue?” questions that are vital to keeping a reader’s interest. Additionally, subtle transitions help create a smooth paragraph. Transitions demonstrated here include “This prevention onus” and “Strategies for such improvement.” The words “this” and “such” are like arrows pointing back to the content of the previous sentences without directly repeating the phrasing.