Wikis & PR: "Fighting Side By Side For The Common Health"

For a time know, we all understood the importance (Sherry' s post was impressing) of wikis as constantly updating databases that are rich in knowledge from different opinions point of views. Well, here comes the "fight for the common good" wiki. A nursing wiki was created back in May 2006 that works, more or less like our well-known wikipedia.


Volunteers create new articles, extend or correct existing articles to keep them current, all without any commercial interest. Since articles in the NursingWiki cannot only be read but also edited, there is a certain kind of "self-cleaning effect" inherent in the Wiki way: only things that gain the approval of the large critical readership will be able to survive in the Wiki. All changes - corrections of simply typos as well as complete re-writings - are being logged in the version history of each article. This offers an overview of the history of each page and makes it possible to undo any potential vandalism through the restoration of previous versions.
be bold and make your knowledge available to everyoneAt this time there are innumerable discussion forums, blogs and web pages offering nursing-specific information on the Internet. NursinWiki's advantage is that visitors can correct mistakes in the articles right away in an easy manner, and they can also add more information from their own expertise. The NursingWiki site is not meant as competition to other nursing sites, but rather a central place for nursing-related information and tutorials.
The NursinWiki volunteers collaborate on this project for different reasons.

• Nursing students put their class notes and papers on the wiki. For their exams they know where to find all the necessary information to prepare for each exam. Chances are high that the entries have already been edited and extended by other users.


• Many nurses and nursing teachers enrich the wiki with their specific expertise and experience, which are often missing from common nursing textbooks.


• Patients and their family members can find information about diseases, therapies and medicine, and can share their experiences with others.

After about one and a half years (March 2006) the German language sister project "PflegeWiki", which started in August 2004, has more than 2900 articles about different nursing topics. For example there are entries with concrete instructions ("How to put on sterile gloves"), special procedures ("Replacing a tracheal cannula"), profiles of well-known nurses ("Patricia Benner"), information about diseases ("Morbus Parkinson"), and anatomy ("Heart") as well as nursing theories ("Self-nursing deficit"), nursing models ("ATL/AEDL") and articles about nursing science ("nursing research"). Many articles contain photographs or other visual aids, which can also be freely used on home pages as well as for lectures as long as credit is given to PflegeWiki.
The English version NursingWiki has been started to give an international touch to the freely available nursing information. These projects are sponsored by the German organization "Verein zur Förderung freier Informationen für die Pflege e.V.", which is officially hosting the web sites and coordinates user activities and does the necessary PR work.