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NURSING ON THE NET

© Pat Mahan

Nursing on the Internet is finally coming of age, despite the stereotype that nurses aren't hi-tech. In my over 20 year (that's all I ever admit to) career, I've had the pleasure of working with hundreds of nurses that never understood the reason for this "rap". We had full color computers in I.C.U.s in the seventies. They tracked patients' cardiac rhythms and any number of other vital measurements. Skilled nursing (and medical) professionals used these tools to help diagnose and treat clients in life threatening situations. Even more impressive, the most skilled use these high technologies to prevent life threatening situations from occurring at all.

I began surfing on-line in the eighties. Technologies for PCs were in their infancy. My computer was an IBM compatible, DOS operated, 8088 with 640K of memory, and a 10Mb hard drive. All of which were "state-of-the-art". Those that had modems, surfed at a whopping 9600 baud. A.O.L. was a local bulletin board in McClean, Virginia (which I was a member of...wish I had put a thousand dollars in that company), and there was very little information on the subject of nursing to be found.

Having said all that, it's no surprise to me with today's new technologies, you can find tens of thousands of web sites written and designed by nurses. Even less surprising, if you type the word "nurse" into one of the major search engines, you get hundreds of thousands of matches. Boy, "we've come a long way, baby!"

So there you have a very brief history of Nursing and the World Wide Web. In this, my first monthly article, I wanted to dispel a myth and give you a little flavor of my background and experience. In the months to come, you can expect a wide range of articles. The one common theme though, will be our great profession. While we may never earn lots of money, we will always be among the richest people I know.

I'm a person who's glass is "half full", so hopefully I can even share some inspiration with you from time to time. So let's dig in to supporting our colleagues on the WWW. Check out the links I've listed for you, and be sure to check back every week. Yes, every week I'll add some new sites for you to review. If you'd like to suggest a site, please feel free to send me an email. Don't forget to include the URL. I'll see you around on the net,

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