When It Comes to Contributors, Who's the Boss?

Well, maybe not that cranky.

What happens when an author the publisher is the "boss" over a contributor?

I'll tell you what. The publisher gets cranky.

Let's say you're authoring a book on, say, data management in hospitals. You feel fully confident in writing pretty much every chapter, but you feel less sure about the content in two of those chapters. So you decide to have someone else write those chapters for you.

That person would be a contributor, and their chapters (yes, I wrote "their" instead of "his or hers" or some other dastardly construct) would become part of your book, part of your intellectual material. Contributors are usually compensated for their contribution to the book, but are usually not part of the royalty structure.

In essence, the author hires the contributor to do some work -- in this case, to write two chapters -- and pays the person for that work. The author, then, is the "boss." The budget master. The decider.

This role can seem to conflict with the author's relationship with the publisher, in which the publisher is the boss, so to speak. When that happens, the author may turn to the publisher to do things he should be doing himself. (See how I switched gender up, there?)

Yeah, that's not good.

When you're the author, you are responsible for:

• Finding the contributor
• Telling the contributor exactly what you want done
• Negotiating with the contributor what he will be paid for each piece of work
• Reviewing the contributor's work
• Sending the work back to the contributor if it isn't what you wanted, and then working with the contributor to provide the correct content
• Performing a final review of the work to make sure it's exactly what you want
• Letting the publisher know exactly what you've asked the contributor for, what they supplied, and how much the publisher should pay, assuming the payments will come out of the author's royalties, the typical scenario

The publisher is generally, but not always, responsible for:

• Developing a contributor agreement based on specific information supplied by you, the author
• Sending the agreement for signatures, electronic or otherwise
• Securely storing the executed agreement
• Paying the fee for the contribution, usually when the book publishes, sometimes before

So don't ask the publisher to tell you what you should pay to a contributor. Don't ask the publisher, "Can you take care of paying Such And So for doing those chapters?" Don't assume the publisher will play a boss-like role in that author-contributor relationship, because that will make them cranky. (Whoops, went back to plural, there.)

Happy, good.

Cranky, baaaad.

'Many Happy Mediums' and Other Reasons Not to Write the Way You Speak

You've probably heard the adage, "Write the way you speak."

Please don't.

I'm all for writing clearly and simply, and mostly we speak that way. Too often, though, we just write what comes into our head and then expect the reader to grasp our meaning.

To wit. This sentence came across our desk recently from an inexperienced author:

“Being an office manager is very challenging since there are many happy mediums that must be mastered in terms of rapport, respect, and continual growth and improvement of patient care and finances.”

Putting aside the bland and overused very and the incorrect use of since (since deals with time; the correct word would be because), let's focus on that "many happy mediums" part.

I sort of know what the author means, and I think if I heard her say it, I would probably nod in agreement.

When that sentence is written, though, all that clarity disappears. What this particular author tried to do was to put too much information into one sentence, and she ended up with a sentence so muddy the reader can't hardly figure out what it means. For instance, how does rapport relate to continued growth in the practice's revenue? And where are all these happy mediums of which you speak?

It's okay to write the way you speak initially, but then read what you've written and look for unclear phrases, like "there are many happy mediums."

Unless, of course, you actually want a several smiling clairvoyants, in which case, go for it!

5 Keys for Making the Most of a Convention

When you're a health care professional, student, or faculty, you owe it to yourself and your profession to attend pertinent conventions each year. Figuring out which sessions to attend at that convention, though, can be daunting.

Here are five tips to help you maximize your learning at a professional conference.

#1  Plan ahead

Check your association's website two weeks before the event and download the agenda. It should be available by then. Highlight all the sessions you want to attend, whether at the same time or not.

After highlighting your favorites, rank them in order of preference. Maybe your first choice will end up being canceled. Ranking your choices will allow you to quickly move to your second choice without reviewing again all the options in that time slot.

#2  Read descriptions carefully

Pay attention to the description of each session. Session titles can be deceiving. It seems that many speakers want their titles to be cute or funny, and that's fine, but those titles may not spell out exactly what the content will be.

Pay attention to adjectives that describe the content. For instance, if a description reads, "Learn simple techniques for handing conflicts," you can bet the session won't dig into conflict resolution but instead cover just the basics.

#3  Don't believe the descriptions

I speak often at conferences, and I know that as much as I plan ahead, there are times I don't have the full content of the workshop finished until shortly before the convention. Unless a speaker gives the same presentation over and over, they probably don't finalize it until near the convention too.

That means that the description the speaker gave the association ahead of time may change before the conference. Sometimes it changes only a little, but sometimes it changes a lot.

Make sure to review the final program when you register at the convention to make sure that the session still meets your needs.

#4  Check out the speakers

Identify the top two or three sessions you really want to see, and then evaluate the speaker. If you know the speaker already and like him or her, great, move on.

But if you don't, do an online search of the speaker to learn more about them. Let's say you'll be attending a session by a university professor. Go to www.ratemyprofessor.com and see if you can find the person's name.

If you see comments suggesting that the person is, um, less than dynamic, you might want to choose another session.

#5  See the sights

Make sure to leave some time to take in a few of the sights in the convention city. If you're in, say, Nashville (where I am as I write this), I'd recommend visiting the Grand Ole Opry. I mean, how can you not?

Get out of the convention hotel and find somewhere great to eat. Use UrbanSpoon, Yelp, TripAdvisor, or some other site to find a place where the locals go. Get a flavor for the area because, well, who knows when you'll be back?

What Goes Into the Front Matter of a Textbook?

Every health care textbook publisher has its own sequence of front matter pieces, but there are only subtle differences.

Front matter, by the way, is everything from the inside front cover of the book to the page 1 of the body of the book. Front matter pages are typically (dare I say always?) lowercase Roman numerals (i, ii, iii, iv, etc.).

Full list

• Half-title page
• Series title or frontispiece (verso, or left-facing page)
• Title page
• Copyright page (verso)
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Foreword
• Preface
• Contributors
• Reviewers
• Acknowledgments
• (List of) Tables
• (List of) Figures
• Abbreviations
• Contents in Brief
• (Table of) Contents
• Introduction

Most common

These elements are the most commonly used, and a few are pretty much mandatory:

• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page (verso)
• Dedication
• Preface
• Contributors
• Reviewers
• Acknowledgments
• (Table of) Contents

For more information on front matter and book layouts, check this great page (and site):
http://andreareider.com/2011/01/23/the-basics-of-book-design/http://andreareider.com/2011/01/23/the-basics-of-book-design/

PAs by Any Other Name...

One of the markets I serve, physician assistants, is currently going through some rough times as a profession. There have been discussions for many years about "Assistant" in the title Physician Assistant. The professional association for PAs, the American Academy of Physician Assistants, has held numerous discussions, debates, and votes about changing the title, but consensus has so far been impossible to achieve.

The last few years have been particularly rancorous, it seems to me, with debates raging on the Physician Assistant Forum, Facebook, and even Clinical Advisor, most recently with a wonderful article by Jim Anderson, MPAS, PA-C, DFAAPA, ATC, called, "A new vision for the AAPA."

Jim asked for feedback on the topic from PAs for Tomorrow and received a number of sensible suggestions, including this one:

"Market us as PAs, not as Physician Assistants. Anything we can do to diminish 'assistant,' even if we don't end up at associate, is a positive change."

I thought I might be able to shed a bit of light on this subject from the point of view of an author, editor, publisher, and nurse. A linguistic bit of light, if you will.

Let's take the title one word at a time.

Physician

In traditional medicine there are two preeminent models, the medical model and the nursing model. Nursing has been highly consistent in their, let's call them, naming conventions.

For instance, when the NP arrived on scene in 1965, through the University of Colorado's groundbreaking program, Nursing "decided" to call them Nurse Practitioners. That is, whoever coined the term nurse practitioner, whether it was Loretta Ford, RN, or her partner at UC Henry K. Silver, MD, the profession adopted the term and made it real. It likewise made real advanced practice nurse, nurse midwife, and nurse anesthetist, consistently using "nurse" in the title.

Eugene Stead

When Eugene Stead, MD, formed the first PA program in 1965 at Duke University, he too, like Ford and Silver, was reacting to a shortage in physicians. Unlike the NP movement, though, there were at the time three iterations, by my count, of the PA:

1. Physician Assistant
2. Physician Associate
3. Medex

It took some time for the profession to make PA real, and the effects are still being felt. The title Physician Assistant does, though, indicate consistency in medical model, just as Nurse Practitioner does with the nursing model.

Assistant

Unfortunately the PA profession didn't have the benefit, from a purely linguistic view, of using practitioner to distinguish them from physicians. To call a PA a "physician practitioner" would have been redundant and unclear.

Associate, I think, was better but still not quite right.

What other descriptors might work? Well, there aren't many.

• Colleague? Rather vague.
• Collaborator? Sounds like a co-conspirator.
• Ally? Oh, please.
• Representative? Adjunct? Adjuntant? No, no, and definitely no.

There just aren't words out there that meet all the needs of the profession.

Now what?

As I see it, PAs have three basic options:

1. Stay with the status quo. [Hate it.]
2. Use a  different term that more accurately identifies what PAs actually do, whether it's physician associate, advanced medical provider, Medex, or some other term as yet unknown. [We haven't found an acceptable term yet, and I doubt we will.]
3. Do what the reader from PAs for a Future suggested. Stick it out with PA, meaning Physician Assistant, but make it much harder for people five years from now, people who have never heard the term physician assistant, to find out what PA means. The thinking here is that if you use the abbreviation consistently but almost never use the full term, people will eventually forget the full term and recognize the profession purely by the abbreviation.

It's that latter course I recommend. Here's how I might implement it:

• Revise association names and logos to delete "Physician Assistant" and instead use "PA."

• Change web copy and copy in other documents to  PA instead of spelling it out, but leave it spelled out in selected documents and web pages. Make the user look for the spelled out name.
• Replace PA in all instances within the profession's own lexicon, and then "push" that lexicon out to the public at all pertinent points.

It might take time, and it will certainly take money and effort, but I'm not sure, at this point in the growth of the profession, whether there are other viable options.

From my purely linguistic view, of course.

Can We Please Stop Using Impact as a Verb?

People in health care really shouldn't be using impact as a verb, as in, "Patient care is impacted by staffing shortages."

Really?

I mean, health care people know what that word means, and they still use it? Wow.

Enough, already. Impact is a noun, as in, "Staffing shortages can have a significant impact on patient care." If you want to use a verb that's similar, use affect.

And while we're at it...

If you're like literally giving patient care or writing about people who literally do, you owe it to yourself to like stop using literally instead of figuratively.

Yes, yes, I know that Merriam-Webster, MacMillan, and even Cambridge dictionaries have sanctioned the use of literally as a synonym for figuratively, but that doesn't mean it doesn't still sound stupid.

Just get to the point. Rather than saying, "The patient was literally vomiting all morning," just say she was vomiting all morning.

Like, okay?