Course Objectives: This discussion addresses CO-4 (Microsoft Word Documents)
🏥 The Scenario
You are the new office coordinator at a growing medical practice. The clinic manager hands you a stack of documents — patient intake forms, appointment reminder letters, insurance verification templates — and says: "These need to look more professional. Can you clean them up?"
You open them in Microsoft Word and realize: some are beautifully formatted, but others are a mess. Inconsistent fonts, no headers, walls of text with no structure. You know the tools to fix this. But first, you need to understand what makes a healthcare document effective.
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Insurance Correspondence
✍️ Your Discussion Prompt
Find a real healthcare document — a discharge instruction, a clinic brochure, a patient form — either one you have encountered personally or one you can find online. Then respond to these prompts:
- Describe the document and its purpose in the healthcare setting
- Identify at least THREE Word formatting features visible in the document (or that should be there — headers, tables, columns, bullet lists, styles, etc.)
- Evaluate the document — what makes it effective or ineffective from a formatting perspective?
- Propose THREE specific improvements using Word tools you learned this week (styles, tables, graphics, headers/footers, columns, etc.)
Strengthen your post by mentioning specific Word tools:
Styles & Headings
Tables
Headers/Footers
Page Borders
Bullet & Numbered Lists
Columns
Graphics & Images
Font Formatting
Paragraph Spacing
Page Breaks
✅ What You Need to Do
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Find a real healthcare document — describe it and explain its purpose.
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Identify 3+ Word features — reference specific formatting tools from this week's lessons.
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Evaluate and improve — what works, what doesn't, and how to fix it. Minimum 200 words.
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Reply to 2 classmates — each reply 75+ words. Add your perspective on their document or suggest different improvements.
Initial Post Due
Wednesday
11:59 PM
Replies Due
Sunday
11:59 PM
📊 Grading Rubric
| Criteria |
Points |
| Thorough analysis of a real healthcare document and its purpose |
20 pts |
| Correctly identifies 3+ Word formatting features with explanation |
15 pts |
| Proposes 3 specific, actionable improvements using Word tools |
15 pts |
| Two substantive replies (75+ words each) that advance the discussion |
10 pts |
| Total |
60 pts |
- Include a link to the document you found (or describe it in detail so classmates can picture it).
- Go beyond "it looks nice." Explain why specific formatting choices help the reader — especially patients who may be stressed or have low literacy.
- Think about accessibility: Would a patient with vision challenges be able to use this document? What about non-English speakers?
- In your replies, compare documents — how do different healthcare settings approach formatting differently?
- Use proper Word terminology (styles, not "bold text everywhere"; headers, not "the big words at the top").
"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
— George Bernard Shaw