Paul,
    A frustrating question it is. The sentence is from a passage on home
health nurses which I am preparing for an edition of the KISS grammar
game.  It's paid for by a grant, and will be available for free on the net.
(The accompanying biology edition is already mainly there.)  In any case,
the nursing passage is filled with this problem. I decided to keep the
passage just as I received it, because in the context there are specific
reasons for its [the problem's] appearance. I discuss those briefly and
suggest that teachers may want to use the passage (13 sentences)
specifically as an exercise to discuss the "she/he" problem -- which I
think partially accounts for the singular/plural blurr.
     If this is incoherent, I'm up early and not awake yet. Sorry,
Ed

>>> "Paul E. Doniger" <[log in to unmask]> 06/24/98
08:34pm >>>
Dear everyone,

I sure have missed these questions.  Thanks to Edward Vavra for
opening the
discussion.  I hope that it doesn't stop here.

I do have one concern about the sentence in question.  Was no one else
troubled by the pronoun reference problem in the absolute phrase
(singular
*patient* = plural *their*)?  Have we really begun to accept a plural
pronoun for a singular antecedent to establish gender neutrality, avoid
using more than one pronoun (e.g. *his or her*), or avoid making all our
antecedents plural?  As a writing teacher, I often find myself forcing my
students to struggle with this frustrating question.

Looking forward to your answers,

Paul E. Doniger