5 Most Popular Nursing Blogs of 2012

As nursing has become an ever-growing profession, numerous blogs have been created to form an online support system for nurses, nursing students, or anyone curious about nursing itself. But when it comes to nursing blogs, which ones matter the most? It can be nearly impossible to choose as each nurse may have his or her own favorites they prefer to read.
Organized by the Nursing Online Education Database, these five blogs were chosen based on blog popularity, which is obtained through various programs such as Google PageRank and Alexa rankings. While these blogs are not professionally written, they are written by nurses and mostly focus on general topics.

1. Code Blog: Tales of aNurse
Code Blog is particularly useful if you are looking to compare different nursing subspecialties. Code Blog examines the pros and cons of numerous subspecialties, and the author captures readers with professional interviews from nurses. The blog also discusses categories such as hospice, nursing school musings, and tales from the critical care units. Patients, doctors, and paramedics also have the option to post their own stories under these categories.

2. It Shouldn’t Happen in Health Care
The blog’s creator, Max, originally wanted to develop a site to collect and share funny moments that happened in his daily life in the hospital. His own story progressed from the author being a pediatric nurse then a nurse practitioner. His journey, although it sounds odd, has attracted over 151,000 visitors hoping to share his life experiences. His blog includes categories such as Alternative Medical Dictionary and Deadly Funny, both of which are meant to be hysterical.

3. Nurse Ratched’s Place 
Nurse Ratched’s Place is a blog more dedicated to humor than serious topics. The blog’s creator designed it to provide personal life experiences and help those that are in the same situation. Not every nurse finds the blog’s comedy appropriate, although some nurses find its black humor a lifesaver in their profession. In fact, when first clicking on the website, you notice the blog’s quote: “Sanity is madness put to good use,” spoken by George Santayana.

4. Emergiblog, The Life& Times of an ER Nurse
Emergiblog’s creator, Kim McAllister, is an ER nurse that has worked in the profession for over 33 years in various settings such as emergency rooms and critical cares units. She is the sole writer of the blog, and she daily has thousands of readers join her blog. The types of discussions are diverse, ranging from entertaining discussions of how nursing is represented in pop culture to more somber topics such as ethics.

5. About a Nurse, Nursing,and Health News 
Nursing students primarily visit this blog. It provides a rich forum that observes and discusses significant issues such as the comprehensive licensing exam, careers in nursing subspecialties, and the effects of hospital shifts on a nurse’s social life. Nurses and nursing students collaborate on these topics and offer their knowledge and support to each party.

Not only have these five blogs demonstrated to be the most popular, they are also the most influential. These blogs are used not only as a place to share funny experiences, but also to lighten your heart and broaden knowledge over nursing subspecialties and the frontline of health care. The profession is one of the strongest foundations of any health care system, and blogs are perfect way reach out to other nurses.

Author Bio:

Darla Foster is a surgical nurse and guest author at TopRN to BSN, where she has contributed articles about top-ranked online RN to BSN degree programs.