Generic Structure of Hospital Pharmacy Instructions

A Finnish hospital pharmacy produces instructions on the handling and use of medicines. These directive text documents are interprofessional in nature: they are produced by pharmacists in the hospital pharmacy and targeted to the multi-professional staff in the wards. This article explores the generic structure of these hospital pharmacy instructions from three perspectives: 1) the move structure of the text documents, 2) the writers’ orientations to the generic structure, and 3) recipient reflections on the generic structure. The structure of the texts is subjected to text-driven move-step analysis, whereas the writers’ and readers’ views are examined via interviews. The analysis reveals that the instructions have an established macrostructure with considerable flexibility and variation on the level of move-internal steps. The writers share a relatively coherent yet implicit understanding of the generic structure, whereas the recipients provide versatile, even contradictory readings and evaluations.