Nursing School unveils joint minor with Annenberg

Your doctor may never learn to write legibly. But at least your nurse -- if he or she minored in Health Care Communications at Penn -- will be able to get a point across. Beginning this semester, the Nursing School and the Annenberg School for Communication are offering a joint minor designed to deal with a reality of modern life: the media is the public's prime conduit for health care information. There is a need for "health care and communications professionals who can effectively articulate complicated health care issues to their patients and the public at large," Nursing Dean Norma Lang said. The minor, open only to Nursing students, will help nurses in areas such as family education, public health programs, disease-prevention efforts and "careers yet undreamed of in the 21st century," she said. Administrators are not creating any new courses specifically for the minor. Instead, Nursing students wishing to complete the minor must take four courses in Annenberg, including health care communications and either inter-ethnic or non-verbal communication. Nursing and Annenberg faculty members selected the courses on the basis of their relevance for future health care providers. Students who opt for the minor will also complete a fifth course, a summer internship in the communications field, between their junior and senior years. The internship, already a requirement for Communications majors, is being done with a twist for Nursing students, who will be "linked with some kind of health care communications process" for their internship, Acting Nursing Undergraduate Dean Kathleen McCauley said. Administrators are not sure how many students will enroll in the program, considering the Nursing School's already heavy course requirements. Currently, Nursing students must complete 40 credits, 28 of which must be in "science and professional areas." "We're not expecting that it's going to be huge," McCauley said. Still, she emphasized that "nurses of the future are going to need these skills." The Nursing School currently offers one other interdisciplinary minor, in nutrition, jointly sponsored with the School of Arts and Sciences. The nutrition minor is open to all Penn undergraduates. Only Nursing students may minor in health care communications because the program focuses exclusively on health care courses, McCauley said. Also, all of the Communications courses are already open to students not enrolled in the minor. Many students said they would be interested in the new minor. "Communications is a big part of the clinical experience," said Patricia Conte, a Nursing sophomore. "It seems like a good thing to know." In addition to the two minors, the Nursing School offers two dual major programs: Health Care Management in conjunction with the Wharton School and a new program starting next fall with the School of Engineering and Applied Science.