Thursday, June 24, 2010

Change of Shift, Santa Fe Style!

Well, after a long hiatus, I'm finally hosting Change of Shift once again, and I'm happy to do so from the comfort of our new home here in Santa Fe, New Mexico! (For those of you unfamiliar with Change of Shift, it is a nursing blog carnival wherein nurses from around the blogosphere are featured in an "online magazine" that is hosted on a different nursing blog every two weeks.)

For those readers who are new to Digital Doorway, my wife and I sold our home in Massachusetts last summer, sold or gave away most of our things, bought an RV, and have been traveling the country for seven months and almost 10,000 miles in search of a new place to call home.

For the moment, we've settled (perhaps temporarily, perhaps not) here in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and you can read about our travels here. That said, this episode of Change of Shift (that most venerable of nursing blog carnivals) will be peppered with photographs from around northern New Mexico for no other reason than the fact that they're nice to look at, entertaining, or simply a visual break from all of those pesky words that I'm making you read (unless, of course, you just look at the pictures!).

My thanks, as always, to Kim (of Emergiblog fame) for making Change of Shift a reality, and for putting nurse bloggers on the blogosphere map. Let's hear it for Kim (cue virtual applause, please).

So, without further ado, here are the participants in this week's edition of Change of Shift, Volume 4, Number 26..........

For whatever reason, it seems that lists are incredibly popular these days, whether it be for iPad apps or the best ways to darn socks, so here's a list of blog posts that feature lists about things that their authors think are worth our while to peruse........

At NursingSchools.net, we learn 50 things you never knew about babies (who would have thought that babies cry before they're born?); while over at The Health Harbinger, we are privy to 25 online startups that are democratizing medical data and information.

Speaking of iPad applications, CNA Class Online shares 5 Excellent iPad apps for "Dr. Mom".

And while we're talking about new technology, RN to MSN Programs submitted a list of 10 awesome Android apps for nurses (Android being Google's answer to Internet-based applications for cellular phones, more or less).

Sadly, we all do indeed need to think about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and NursingSchools.net submitted a sobering list of the 10 biggest health dangers behind the oil spill, which includes neurological disorders (and chemical sensitivity, I'll add) among the workers dealing directly with this toxic nightmare of the century.

Thinking globally, The Health Hawk shares with us 17 intriguing infographics about global health, which, apropos of the oil spill, describes the fact that the average American driver uses 500 gallons of gasoline per year! (And we wonder why we're still addicted to oil?)

And the lists go on.......

Aging Healthy submits a list of the top 50 aging and gerontology blogs for those of us who want to prolong our time on earth (oil spills or no oil spills....), and NursingSchools.net submits yet another post for our enjoyment and enlightenment, this time with 100 entertaining and inspiring quotes for nurses, one of my favorites being "Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say" (W.H. Auden).

And speaking of NursingSchools.net, we received yet another list (don't they work over there?), this time regarding the 100 best blogs for exploring alternative medicine.

Moving away from lists towards actual prose (cue English teachers cheering in the background), we were happy to receive a submission from Barbara Olson of Florencedotcom fame, this particular piece on "Good Reads About Medication Misadventures" being recently published on Medscape (for which a username and password may be necessary in order to gain access).

And when it comes to those of us who might like a career change from direct care, Master of Health Administration shares with us "The Ultimate Guide to Health Administration Careers" (and the salaries don't seem half bad.......). Alternatively, Online LPN to RN delivers The Ultimate Guide to Nursing Agencies for those nurses who would like some assistance in landing their next job or plotting a career move.

Nurse Teeny at The Makings of a Nurse offers a very personal post about "transition shock" and a new job, something we can all probably relate to.

And over at Nurse Me, the author struggles with a situation wherein a patient's religious beliefs impact her ability to deliver the care that's needed in a post entitled Science vs Jesus.

Author Peggy McDaniel at The American Journal of Nursing's Off The Charts blog chimes in for a post entitled "Protection or Harm----What Are You Doing at the Bedside?", and there is much sobering food for thought here vis-a-vis poor hand hygiene and hospital-acquired infections.

In a post entitled "Fingerprints, Ad Nauseum", yours truly posits that there is utter bureaucratic insanity behind the need to be fingerprinted for every job application and license change that one must undergo (especially here in the Western US). Can't there be a central databank of fingerprints, or does the FBI just adore receiving multiple fingerprint cards for the same person over and over again? (It's your tax dollars hard at work, folks!)

And from the Land Down Under, Nurse In Australia shares a post entitled "Sheepish, Demure Nurses Pander to Inflated Egos". The nurse-doctor relationship is always something worth talking about, isn't it?


Our final two posts for this edition of CoS are well-written missives that address two very important issues worthy of our individual and collective attention.

First, Katie Morales of NursesNetwork.com (where my blog currently feeds automatically via RSS) discusses the legal and ethical notion of how companies profit financially with the use of our tissue and blood, whether we donated it willingly or not. In her post entitled "Not Much Has Changed, Katie offers several examples wherein companies benefited significantly from the cells or tissues of private citizens who then have no rights whatsoever to also benefit from the millions of dollars made from tissues harvested from their own bodies. What's the matter with this picture?

And last but certainly not least, our beloved Kim McAllister, the maven of Emergiblog and the creator of Change of Shift itself, delivers a passionate and convincing open letter to the American Nurses Association that rightly questions the ANA's refusal to endorse the creation of the Office of the National Nurse.

HR 4601 is an important piece of legislation currently making its way through Congress that would elevate the Chief Nursing Officer of the Public Health Service to the position of The National Nurse, a move that would bring nursing to the fore in terms of preventive health and the public's understanding of what nurses actually do. In March of this year, I wrote a blog post delineating how the National Nurse would benefit the country in myriad ways, and I invite you to read that post, read Kim's letter, visit the website of The National Nurse organization, and get involved in this important fight for recognition of nursing's rightful place at the American health care table.

Teddy Roosevelt once coined the term "the bully pulpit" to signify a position of authority or rank that gives it's holder the right and privilege to pontificate and share his or her opinions without reserve. While I hold little authority or rank in society as a simple nurse and writer, this blog is my own bully pulpit, and hosting Change of Shift is yet another opportunity to speak my mind and reach a larger audience, if only for a fleeting digital moment. I am grateful for your attention, and I urge you to contact your member of Congress about wholeheartedly supporting HR 4601!

Thank you to Kim for this opportunity, thanks to those of you who are taking the time to read this, and a special thanks to the bloggers and writers whose contributions made this edition of Change of Shift what it is.

And in the words of Garrison Keillor, "Be well, do good work, and keep in touch."

11 comments:

Kim said...

Keith! Thank you so much for hosting - New Mexico looks fantastic!

Katie Morales said...

Thanks for hosting and posting!! Great job, Keith.

jacob said...

Thanks for mentioning a recent Off the Charts post in Change of Shift. And thanks too for the wonderful photos of New Mexico. The light and space (and the smell of sagebrush cooking in the sun) come through beautifully, and make me very jealous.

Keith and I have already been in touch about this, but he encouraged me to leave a comment here as well. In this edition of Change of Shift, and in some others recently, many of the posts mentioned have been from sites like NursingSchools.net that have no other purpose for existence than to collect traffic for the sake of selling something or other. There is no identifiable independent editorial voice (a lone blogger, or a team of editors putting up the work of a group of bloggers, etc.); the use of lists at such sites is fun, but merely intended as "linkbait" to draw in more traffic.

However interesting they may be, should such posts be included in Change of Shift? I have no idea, but it seems to somehow reduce the value of independent nurse bloggers (you know who you are) as well as journals like AJN that are trying to provide an unbiased blogging voice on important (and less important) health care matters.

I figure I’ll just throw this one out there, since it’s a big thing to us here that any information related to health care not have the imprint of the profit-motive as its sole driver…we have too many so-called news stories these days about drugs, etc., that originate in PR depts. of pharmaceutical companies and the like!

Love to hear your opinions.

Jacob
blog editor, Off the Charts (AJN)

Keith "Nurse Keith" Carlson, RN, BSN, NC-BC said...

Well, this conversation will apparently help as Change of Shift enters its fourth year of publication and we examine our collective blogging navels. I'm sure Kim will be addressing this issue very clearly in the weeks and months to come!

Anonymous said...

Hi Keith, nice one... nice pics too.
Just a note, I totally agree with the comment by jacob regarding nursingschools link posts etc that are looking to gain links & don't have great reading material that I believe is worthy of change of shift... I've hosted too & included these in the past, but enough is enough I reckon!! What say you, emergiblog?!
Also, the URL you've used for the science vs Jesus link points to the #comments section, you may need to edit it....

Cya
-Ross

Nurse Me said...

Keith,

Thanks for including me this week. I don't know how that happened, but I'm glad it did! I just checked my link and although the first text to appear is the comments section, a quick scroll up takes you to the actual post. Thanks again!

Nurse Me

Dr Dean said...

Beautiful pictures. Thanks for hosting.

Sorry I missed the deadline, my bad, as my kids used to say.

It is good to see the dialogue on the ANA stance-so often these decisions are made in a vacuum. As my wife is in public health, I agree totally with Kim's and your opinions.

Jeff said...

Great job. A lot of important stuff going on. Thanks for highlighting the The Ultimate Guide to Nursing Agencies, I will have to check that out.

RehabNurse said...

Jacob,

I've wondered that myself, and as a previous host of Change of Shift, it can get difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.

I really enjoy participating in CoS, and sometimes I can't make the deadline, so I understand.

It is tough getting good content, not because it's not there, but because perhaps, not enough nurse bloggers remember (or know) to submit.

I enjoyed this one and look forward to the next one.

And Jacob, BTW, thanks for including me on the Off the Charts sidebar. I appreciate it. Hope you can add even more nurse bloggers...we need all the PR help we can get!

Unknown said...

Thanks for hosting Keith. The one time that I tried to host, all I got was a few link baits and very few actual blog posts. Made a gal feel rather irritated and not such a great blogger if I couldn't attract quality posts. Sigh.. Oh well.. I get traffic from the lists that are made so I don't have too much of a beef against them. I loved the pics you used in the COS too!

Phlebotomist said...

Wow! Mexico is such a wonderful land and place to visit. It is truly a land of enchantment.