A couple of weeks ago, a collection of articles entitled Texts of Life and Death was published. This anthology deals with the need for writing in social and health services. New requirements for documenting and reporting appear every day, but their impact on the main work is ignored. For example, Finnish daycare workers, who have jobs more like preschool or kindergarten teachers elsewhere, spend several hours every week writing notes and updating records, further reducing the time spent actually caring for children.
The co-editor of the book, Ulla Tiililä, has often drawn attention to the fact that such writing is not really seen as additional work. Changes are made in the name of effective use of resources, but those imposing the changes often do not notice that they bring additional layers of review and consume time and money on needless paperwork.
Many articles in the collection offer concrete examples of the impact of these writing tasks, yet how little attention is given to them in discussion and research. Texts of Life and Death makes the work of workplace writing visible in a new way.