UCLA Medical Center: Article Analysis

The UCLA Medical Center has been ranked "Best in the West" by U.S. News and World Report's annual survey of the best hospitals in America for fourteen consecutive years.”(medschool.ucla.edu, p.4). It is also ranked 9th in the country in research funding from the National Institutes of Health and 3rd in the US in research dollars from all sources. UCLA’s Medical School has been able to keep its reputation by developing a sense of identity through rhetoric, in lay terms, UCLA is able to persuade the types of students that will continue the excellence UCLA is known for because of the image of “what a medical school looks like” they have indirectly created.
The relationship between rhetoric and medicine are quite webbed together. Some say rhetoric

They are taking a look into how the institution will use trademarks to improve their identity, or reputation. The study uses “…brand to mean an explicit and implicit embodiment of institutional identity and aspirations that can be revealed or created through use of trademarks. In short, brand is the deep, underlying architecture of an institution that implicates reputation, quality, and values.”(Rooksby and Collins, 2016). Participants in another study were able to recognize the professional identity an individual of higher professional status, one such as a doctor, has. “Participants recognized the very high status of the medical profession and the prestige associated with being a doctor. Status was not just related to financial rewards but, as one male participant put it, to the moral respect associated with the profession :…”(Travels in Extreme Social Mobility, 2016). Attending an institution such as UCLA, allows and initiates upward social mobility where many view as positive. Those studied took a moment to understand the difference sociocultural identity and professional identity. Irby and Hamstra both state that “…the dominant assumption in this framework is that professionalism involves becoming a good doctor by aspiring to attain a certain professional

Downs defines rhetoric as “a set of principles that explain and predict how people make meaning and interact… rhetoric is an operating system for human interaction and meaning making”(Downs, p.460) Rhetoric is important with regard to looking at persuasive elements at play within a community, or in my case, UCLA Medical School’s website. My hopes are to combine the two lenses where I point out the important persuasion methods used on the website that helped develop an identity where prospective students are able to easily transition into. During my research, I will look at UCLA’s medical school website through two lens of identity and rhetoric to answer the following question:
➢ How does medical institutions, such as UCLA’s Medical School, use rhetoric to persuade their target applicants while developing identity?
I plan on demonstrating how the facility persuades their audience as well as demonstrating the image, or presumption, they created when someone thinks of UCLA’s Medical School or any other medical facility.