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.

Some Recent Notable Posts from Nursing Blogs

Some posts of interest from the nursing blogs (those that are currently active; a fair number of familiar bloggers seem to be taking breaks, having kids, starting new jobs):

“Certified Medical Assistants Calling Themselves Nurses” can be found at The Nurse Practitioner’s Place. It’s not just inaccurate to do so, says the author. It’s often illegal.

Photo from otisarchives4, via Flickr. Photo from otisarchives4, via Flickr.

At My Strong Medicine, a short post about men, women, USPSTF guidelines, becoming an NP, and reaching a certain age, called “Heard While Studying: Everything Falls Apart at Age 40.”

One blogger, among others, who has been pretty quiet for some months (and who used to organize a regular “blog carnival” that helped create a community among nurse bloggers) is Kim McCallister at Emergiblog. She popped back up several weeks ago with a post called “The Voice,” which is about exactly that—how a nurse blogger lost the sense of freedom she started with as a staff nurse jotting down experiences, and instead internalized a “Sister Superego” that cautioned her to be “prim and proper,” rapping her knuckles until she just fell silent instead. Frustration with computerized charting and the general state of health care seems to be part of it as well. We hope the spirit moves her to write more soon.

Lastly, there’s a nice post by Megen Duffy (who often writes AJN‘s iNurse column, and who […]

2016-11-21T13:08:29-05:00January 25th, 2013|healthcare social media, nursing perspective|0 Comments
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Top 10 New AJN Posts of 2012

British Nurse and Baby, via Flickr/jdlasica British Nurse and Baby, via Flickr/jdlasica

By Jacob Molyneux, AJN senior editor/blog editor

Maybe, who knows, some social media content isn’t really quite as ephemeral as we usually believe. Some of our posts seem to keep finding readers, like 2009’s “New Nurses Face Reality Shock in Hospitals–So What Else Is New?” They’re still relevant and timely, addressing as they do some of the more perennial topics in nursing.

Our 20 most-read posts for the year include several others that aren’t “new” this year: “Parting Thoughts: 10 Lessons Learned from Florence Nightingale’s Life”; “Confused About the Charge Nurse Role? You’re Not Alone”; “‘Go Home, Stay, Good Nurse’: Hospital Staffing Practices Suck the Life Out of Nurses”; “Is the Florence Nightingale Pledge in Need of a Makeover?”; “Do Male Nurses Face Reverse Sexism?”; “Fecal Impaction and Dementia: Knowing What to Look for Could Save Lives”; “Are Nursing Strikes Ethical? New Research Raises the Stakes”; and “One Take on the Top 10 Issues Facing Nursing.”

The upstarts. Putting aside posts that have shown a certain longevity, here are the top 10 new posts of 2012, according to our readers, in case you missed them along the way. Are they our best posts of 2012? We will leave that to you. Thanks to everyone who wrote, read, and commented on this blog over the past year.

1.

2016-11-21T13:08:45-05:00December 12th, 2012|healthcare social media|0 Comments
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White Uniforms for Nurses? The ‘Nays’ Have It…

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, AJN editor-in-chief

Nurses and patients aboard U.S.S. Relief, 1921/via Wikipedia

Well, if sheer numbers rule, then the image of nurses in white uniforms has gone the way of the nurse’s cap.

Earlier this week, on AJN’s Facebook page, I asked whether RNs should go back to white uniforms as a professional standard. Within a few hours there were 20 comments; by the next day there were about 200 comments (we had to delete the post with the first 100 or so, since we were unsure about the copyright status of the image used—very sorry if that included your comment!).

Clearly, nurses care about what they wear. Comments ranged from one word (“No,” with multiple exclamation points), to thoughtful reasoning around stains and keeping the uniforms clean, to advocating for an individual’s right to choice (about colors, that is).

There were only a few comments that were pro-white, with arguments that they were more professional than colors and “wild prints” and helped patients identify RNs from other staff more easily.

Here’s a sampling of comments (a few minor typos corrected):

Yes—but no hats.

No—but I do think it makes a lot of sense to be able to clearly identify who is an RN when you are a patient in a hospital. Clear identification is definitely a problem.

I support white uniforms. This is the required color at the Cleveland Clinic. Patients tend to appreciate the crisp, clean look of […]

2016-11-21T13:09:03-05:00October 26th, 2012|healthcare social media, nursing perspective|4 Comments
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Where Do You Get Your News?

By Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, AJN editor-in-chief

I’ve watched the recent political conventions and have been listening to the sound bites one hears on the radio and television news shows. The speakers and newscasters all sound intelligent and righteous and in command of “facts.” However, as we’ve learned from the widespread public misunderstanding of many aspects of the Affordable Care Act, it takes some deeper digging to know what’s “spin” versus what’s fact. (Indeed, fact-checking has become its own political issue, as it seems both parties have been playing a bit loose when it suits their messaging.)

I wonder how many people actually take the time to validate what they hear on the radio or television. Do most people take what they hear at face value? Will many people vote based only on what they heard from the convention coverage or in 30-second news clips (or worse, in the barrage of advertising paid for by the PACs, many of which are quietly funded by industries or wealthy individuals with a stake in who gets elected)?

It occurred to me that I’ve never seen my youngest son or nieces and nephews read a newspaper, yet they seem well-informed about the political issues. I asked my son where he gets his information. He said, “Well, there’s something called RSS feeds . . . .” (He was surprised that I not only knew what they were, but that I use them!) (RSS stands for really […]

2016-11-21T13:09:22-05:00September 10th, 2012|healthcare social media|3 Comments
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Tortoise and Hare: Top 15 AJN Blog Posts for Past Quarter

By Jacob Molyneux, AJN senior editor/blog editor

Dance Floor, via Flickr

We haven’t done as many posts as usual for the past few months. Various contributors are on the lam, vacationing, singing arias, earning PhDs, watching “Game of Thrones” episodes over and over and the like. So be it. 

But here is a list of the most popular posts over the past three months, in case you missed any of these at the time. Of necessity, since this is a blog, some are more ephemeral in their subject matter and relevance than others.

One or two, like “Do Male Nurses Face Reverse Sexism?”, are several years old but still hit the mark. Some were quick studies, grabbed all their readers in a matter of a few days and then tapered off quickly, while others came on slowly like the tortoise, steadily accumulating readers, asserting their charm via random Google searches.

Feel free to let us know what topics you’d like to see covered in the future. We can’t promise we can deliver, but it’s good to get a variety of perspectives. A greater clinical focus? More on policy? More on the nuts and bolts of nursing subspecialties? More personal narratives from nurses or patients? More posts related to recent published research? More polls? Trivial gossip about celebrities? To repeat: Let us know! And enjoy the early summer weekend.

“The Case of Amanda Trujillo”

“New Nurses Face Reality Shock in Hospital Settings – So What Else is New?”

“‘How Can You Bear to […]

2016-11-21T13:09:49-05:00June 22nd, 2012|healthcare social media|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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