PixelRN

I like to help people. So sue me.

You are a nurse. You are out in public, going about your business and you see a person in distress, or a situation where someone has been harmed or injured in some way. What would you do? I had a conversation with some fellow nurses yesterday that I found kind of surprising. Someone was cursing their husband for telling her son's little league team that she was an ER nurse. Now the coach wanted her to volunteer to run the first aid station at some of the games. "I never tell anyone I'm a nurse," she says. The other nurse agreed and said that she never wears her scrubs home when taking the subway, because she would be expected to help if something went wrong. Now, I understand where this mentality comes form. Everyone's afraid of liability. Everyone's afraid of losing their license if something goes wrong. Call me naive and idealistic, but if I saw someone in distress, or someone who had been harmed, it would take wild hungry pit bulls to keep me from helping them. You see, it's kind of why I became a nurse in the first place. Not only is there something so infinitely rewarding about being able to help someone in a crisis situation, I also consider it to be my duty. And I may not have the type of first-line emergency skills that many ER nurses and EMTs have but I'll tell you what I can do. I can hold pressure to stop someone from bleeding. I know BLS and if there's an AED around I can set it up, calmly and quickly. I can hold someone's hand, talk them through the situation and try to keep the scene calm until the EMTs get there. And if you're still afraid, well, there is something to protect you. It's called The Good Samaritan Law. I'm proud to be a nurse. Sure I may do my share of complaining about all the menial stuff, but in the end, I have pride in who I am. This is going to sound incredibly corny but when I wear my scrubs out in public, stopping to get coffee before work, or stopping at the grocery store after my shift, I hold my head up a little higher. The funny thing is that people seem to treat me with slightly more reverence when I'm in my scrubs. And I don't mind that at all.

Blog World Expo Wrap-Up

Blog World Expo has been an excellent conference. It is so energizing to meet other bloggers. This makes up for every person in my life that says "Huh, what? blogging?" and then their eyes glaze over. I've met so many other bloggers and feel completely rejuvenated and inspired to keep on blogging. I can't say enough about how cool it was to meet Kim (emergiblog) and Dr. Val (Revolution Health) in person. I really felt like Kim was an old friend, especially when she said she remembered when I graduated from nursing school! The exciting thing is that we spent some time planning for next year's conference. We are planning our own Medblogger/HealthCare track. What this means is that we can plan our own sessions and have an great venue to meet one another in person. I can't stress enough what a worthwhile experience this will be. In the future I will be blogging about how you guys can make this happen (budgeting for it, perhaps finding sponsorships to help you with expenses), but for now I will just urge you all to put it on your calendars: October 15th-17th in Las Vegas. You know how much fun we have in the Dr. Anonymous chat room every Thursday night? - it's going to be like that only 1000x better.

Tim Ferriss at Blog World Expo

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Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park at Blog World Expo

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Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park at Blog World Expo

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Just finished listening to this guy talk at Blog World Expo. He has some great things to say about staying true to what you are passionate about. One of the most interesting things I learned from him is that Linkin Park actually chose the name of their band because the domain name, lincolnpark.com was already taken!

Medbloggers at Blog World

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Posted by email from pixelrn's posterous

Okay, so who's who in this picture? Rob Halper, who runs the JNJ Health Channel, yours truly, Shane Pike of Health Care Today fame, the illustrious Kim of emergiblog, and the vivacious Dr. Val.

Reaching out to Nurses, the Web 2.0 Way

Recently I wrote about how companies might use social media to reach out to nurses, and discussed how Johnson & Johnson might use Twitter to start a conversation about their products. After writing that post, I learned that J&J now has a health channel on Youtube and I think this is an exciting step in the right direction. Now let's take a look at the other medical company that uses an ampersand in its name: Smith & Nephew. One of my favorite products that they make is the Allevyn wound dressing. It's a highly absorbent, non-adhesive dressing that is very effective for pressure ulcers. So how does S&N get the message out to nurses about this product? Two ways come to mind: 1. Product Demos. This could occur on the unit, perhaps on an education day, or maybe at a conference. Usually done by sales reps who bring a big bag of candy to keep everyone interested. 2. Company Website. Overall, The S&N website has a nice look to it - good use of color and graphics. There's some navigation issues but beyond that, here is a place I see room for improvement. When I navigate to one of the products I use and click on "contact us," I am lead to a screen that looks like this:

Okay, so it looks pretty but who is going to take the time to fill out this form? S&N should be finding ways to make it easy for us to contact them. To me this seems like a lot of hassle just have a informal discussion about a product. On the other hand, if S&N had some interesting learning materials on say, Youtube, Flickr, or perhaps even a corporate blog I would then have a venue to leave a comment and perhaps start a conversation about the product. This is where large companies like Smith & Nephew are missing the boat. On the other hand, I have a pretty good reason why they aren't interested in opening the lines of conversation to their customers. First of all, there is a feeling in the marketing department of most of these companies that you have to control your brand, control your message, under all circumstances. I would suspect that the other reason is that they aren't yet convinced of the ROI in joining in the social media parade. As a nurse, (and a social media evangelist) I would love to see some more of these companies start joining in the Groundswell. When these companies send their sales reps to give us a little demo at change of shift, you know what I'm thinking? "Let's wrap this up as quickly as possible. I have a boatload of stuff to do and I need to hit the ground running." If they come in the middle of the afternoon I am thinking, "Okay, what form of carbs did they bring so I can snarf that up and then get back to finishing things up?" My mind is not really in the right place to be learning about a new product. Why not figure out a way to reach out to nurses when they are relaxed, and not thinking about the 389 things they have to get done before change of shift? Or better yet, why not create some really compelling learning content that nurses would seek out rather than bothering them while they are working? So who's going to be first?

Social Networking Strategies for Travel Nurses: Part 1

First of all, what is social networking, and why would a travel nurse be interested in it? A social networking service is basically any type of website that provides a way for people to connect and socialize online. More and more nurses these days are using social networking services to connect with friends, family, and other nurses. Travel nurses, especially, can benefit from these new technologies. They travel from job to job, making new friends along the way and trying to keep in touch with old friends, not to mention the people they leave behind at their home base. Online communities, blogs, and photo-sharing sites can help them stay connected to everyone. But there are many different sites out there and figuring out which ones to use can sometimes be overwhelming. I'd like to share with you my top 5 favorite social networking sites, and explain how they can benefit the travel nurse. Let's start with one of my favorite social networking sites, Flickr Flickr is a site that lets you store and share your photos. Two things make flickr especially useful, the ability to "tag" your photos and organize them according to subject, and the ability to search other people's photos by subject matter. Also, you can create a profile and "friend" other flickr users. Flickr and traveling go hand in hand. Say you are about to accept a travel assignment in Baltimore, MD. You've never been there before and you are anxious to get a feel for the city. Perhaps you'd like to figure out what neighborhood to live in, or what sites you'd like to see. Flickr allows you to search all of the photos tagged, Baltimore. From here you might search other neighborhoods in Baltimore, like Canton or Charles Village. I recommend searching by "tags only" and by "most interesting" as opposed to "most recent." That way, flickr will pick out the most relevant photos for you. You can also search by clicking on "Explore" and choosing "Places." Then, type in the place you would like to see and flickr will show you photos that have been geo-tagged with that place, and also show you some photo groups that revolve around that location. Flickr is also a social site, and so you can create a list of contacts. Flickr, like many other social networking sites, allows you to find people you already know by searching your email contacts on gmail, hotmail, and yahoo mail. When you become friends with someone, it will be easier to view one another's photos. Finally, when you start uploading your own photos, you can also "tag" them. Tagging simply refers to designating a keyword to your photo, making it easier to search for at a later date. You can basically choose any tags you want, and organize your photos according to subject matter, location, or when you took them. In part two I'll take a look at Facebook, and also talk about starting your own blog.

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I knew it was a full moon.

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