How to build the narrative in professional report writing

Virtuosa is for professionals writing high-quality, complex reports - the kind that carry real weight and consequence. The promise is that it takes the crushing time and cognitive load out of report writing while keeping the clinician firmly in control of the thinking and the final word. At its best it should feel like a highly capable colleague who hands you a beautifully structured first draft, not a black box that produces something you can't stand behind.

Building the narrative.

In a fiction book there is an introduction, middle and conclusion.

In medicolegal report writing, as an example, the idea is to tie the story to what is relevant to the legislation.

For example, instead of just saying facts, it is more about creating a story around what's just happened.

So instead of reading "Miss Smith reported trauma-related symptoms which were x,y,z" fact

The goal is to:

Tell the story of Miss Smith and the context for this treatment. We could say something like:

"Miss Smith has a history of avoiding leaving her home for fear that she would be assaulted. This directly connects with the original assault at work in that she often believes that she sees somebody who has a similar appearance to the assailant, who was tall and had blonde hair. When this happens, she often has a fight-flight response and feels the need to leave the environment".

"We are working on psycho-education to help her to use soothing and grounding strategies so that she can gradually expose herself to environments such as these. We are using EMDR to help change the trauma logic so that she can believe that she is safe when she is in safe environments. This is imperative to her psychological recovery and also in order for her to eventually return to some kind of occupational function".

What we are doing here is:

1. We are describing, as a story, her experience of the trauma-related symptoms.
2. We are providing a context where anything that relates to the compensable workers' compensation psychological injury is explained in terms of how it is relevant back to that, so that supports her in getting future treatment.
3. We are explaining about Miss Smith's functional ability.
4. in the second paragraph we are explaining the treatment provided, and tying it to the goal of increasing her work capacity as this is an important goal when taking into account the workers compensation system.

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