Healthcare social media encompasses the use of many social media platforms by both patients and clinicians, including nurses, in order to share information, stories, experience, and form communities.

What Advice Would You Give a New Nursing Student? Our Readers Respond…

KarenRoushBy Karen Roush, MSN, RN, FNP-C, AJN clinical managing editor

My daughter Kim is starting nursing school next month, so last week I asked AJN’s Facebook followers for the best piece of advice I could give her. The response was overwhelming: over 600 people offered wisdom, encouragement, and tips for success. I went through and read them all and the following is an attempt to synthesize the advice.

Of course, with so many responses, there were many valuable pieces of advice I had to leave out, from the practical to the profound, such as:

sit in the front of class, stick to your principles, invest in good shoes, choose clinicals that push you out of your comfort zone, be early for everything, celebrate the small victories, get a really good stethoscope up front, believe in yourself, pick the hardest patient you can at clinical, audiorecord the lectures, be truthful and committed to your work, eat healthy, get to know your instructors, coffee and chocolate!

And finally: look into the eyes of your patients and be sure they know you care. Every patient, every time.

(Oh, and not to leave out the lighthearted—Don’t hold your nose in clinicals. The teachers frown on that.)

Below are five areas of advice that stood out:

1) “Take a […]

2016-11-21T13:05:03-05:00April 9th, 2014|career, healthcare social media, nursing perspective, students|8 Comments
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Recent Nurse Blog Posts of Interest, Inhaled Insulin, a Note on Top Blogs Lists

By Jacob Molyneux, AJN senior editor/blog editor

Here you will find some links to nursing blog posts, a look at this week’s Affordable Care Act health exchange enrollment numbers, and a couple of items of interest about new treatments or studies, plus a note on blogs that award other blogs badges. A grab bag, so bear with me…

crocus shoots, early spring, I think/ via Wikimedia Commons crocus shoots, early spring, I think/ via Wikimedia Commons

At the nursing blogs:

RehabRN has a post about a friend who was bullied by a nurse of much higher authority in the same hospital. Such stories, if true, are always upsetting. What can you do but take it when the power differential is so great?

At the INQRI blog (I’m not going to tell you what the initials stand for except that it has something to with quality, research, and nursing), there’s a post about why stroke survivors need a team approach to palliative care.

Megen Duffy (aka Not Nurse Ratched) has a really very good post at a site she sometimes blogs for. I already shared it via a tweet yesterday, but it deserves more. It’s called “Nursing Will Change You.”

At Infusion Nurse Blog, there’s a post addressing IV solution shortages (now happening on top of […]

2016-11-21T13:05:04-05:00April 4th, 2014|healthcare social media, nursing perspective|0 Comments
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Preventing Delirium, The Luxury of Time, Things We Get Right, More: Nursing Blog Roundup

By Jacob Molyneux, senior editor

Here are a few recent posts of interest at various nursing blogs:

karindalziel/ via Flickr Creative Commons karindalziel/ via Flickr Creative Commons

In the throes of nursing school: An intriguing little pastiche of a poem (does it qualify as a ‘found word’ poem?) can be found at a newish blog, adrienne, {student} nurse, in a short post called anatomy of a bath. In another post, she makes the following observations: “In nursing school, you are not driving the train…You absolutely must keep telling yourself that there is nothing wrong with you.”

Preventing delirium in the ICU: At the INQRI blog (the blog of the Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Institute), a post summarizes some recent research on implementing a “bundle” of practices to increase mobility and reduce sedation in the ICU, all in order to prevent patient delirium, which is known to have many short- and long-term negative effects.

The luxury of time. At Love and Ladybits, the author gets a tantalizing glimpse of the quality of care she’d be able to provide if she had more time to spend with each patient. Of course, this “alternative reality” can’t last, but perhaps it can serve as a touchstone of sorts during […]

2016-11-21T13:05:16-05:00March 7th, 2014|career, healthcare social media, nursing perspective|1 Comment
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Nursing Blog Links, Late Winter Edition: Emotions in Primary Colors

By Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor

by doortoriver, via Flickr by doortoriver, via Flickr

Nurses seem to have hope on their minds as the daylight grows longer and stronger and the winter ever so slowly winds down. There’s a good post at According to Kateri about hope and letting go of the past.

Which reminds me: sort of along these lines, we recently had a good post here at Off the Charts about hope and patient prognosis.

Theresa Brown’s latest at Opinionator, a New York Times blog, is about the communication gap between clinician and patients and the need to find ways to bridge this, for everyone’s sake.

There’s a post at Not Nurse Ratched about another of the more basic emotions: anger. Or, more specifically, anger related to workplace issues that are slowly driving you nuts. Not that any nurses can relate to that . . .

If you’re up for it, here’s a pretty profound post from Hospice Diary about someone who is very articulate about the meaning of his own dying process.

And here’s a kind of funny one at Nursing Notes of Discord about the questions a new nurse asks in the course of a day.

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2016-11-21T13:05:22-05:00February 18th, 2014|career, healthcare social media, nursing perspective|0 Comments
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For Nurses, on Slowing Down, Unplugging, Career Change, and Serendipity

Photo by James Russo, via Flickr Photo by James Russo, via Flickr

Here are a few year-end posts from recent years that seem to me pretty much as relevant and timely as ever.

“Career Change in 2011 [or 2014]? Ask the God of Gates, Doors, and Beginnings”
A good source of inspiration for any nurse who feels the need of a change.

“Year-End Reindeer Dreams”
A meditation on serendipity and working holiday shifts as a nurse. It got a lot of responses from readers when we first posted it.

“The Slow Old Days”
A short, thought-provoking post by AJN editor-in-chief Shawn Kennedy, about unplugging over the holidays.

—Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor

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2016-11-21T13:05:43-05:00December 30th, 2013|career, healthcare social media, nursing perspective|0 Comments
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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