In the last week I have been heartened by the discussions on Twitter revolving around community nursing. There has been much sharing of experiences, links to excellent resources and materials to support practice.
One of the concerns that goes with the delight at seeing so much exchange by professionals and organisations is the regularity with which the same names appear on Twitter. I wonder whether there is a hidden army of Twitter readers who never actually comment - or are we tweeters just tweeting to ourselves?
Well, the QNI is going to test this out and hopefully, in the process, encourage more community nurses to share and learn from this lively and vibrant form of social media.
On 8 April 2014 at 8pm the QNI is going to participate in a @WeNurses hosted a Twitter chat in which we plan to involve as many community nurses as possible and to have record breaking numbers of participants.
In the lead up we will be inviting four guests to write blogs on the themes to be discussed on 8 April. These will be posted on the QNI website, to whet appetites for the twitchat to follow.
In the meantime, I urge you to visit the WeNurses website and be inspired to tweet. WeNurses was started by Teresa Chinn, a nurse who knew nothing about tweeting before she started this inspiring initiative a few years ago.
Tweeting is a great way for nurses to ask for information directly. Drop in a question and wait for the response. It truly is a team spirited way to drive up standards of patient care through the sharing of latest guidelines and practices. It can save time in preventing the 'reinvention of a wheel' that has already been created elsewhere.
It is also a way of gathering support to influence policy and change and contribute to the community nursing voice which, by nature of being in the community, is often not as audible as that of our hospital-based colleagues.
Please follow the QNI on Twitter using the handle @theqni.