NursingWiki & Wikipedia nursing portal


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Nursing



http://en.nursingwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page


Here are two wiki resources for nurses. The NursingWiki is a nice idea, but there aren't many articles, the articles aren't very in depth, and it seems sort of redundant when you have Wikipedia, which covers pretty much everything in the world. Additionally, the NursingWiki suffers from a certain lack of vision for the site. For example, under the article "nurse," there is a portrait of a smiling woman woman in white scrubs. Why? Is that what a nurse is--a "smiling woman in white scrubs"? Likewise, the article "nursing language" contains no discussion of medical terminology or the incorporation of extra-medical terminology into nursing but does have a list of random medical terms and their German translations--huh?

Nurses interested in contributing to open access, open source knowledge databases about nursing should stick with contributing to Wikipedia, since there is no need to duplicate that service. However, NursingWiki could fill a niche by providing articles for nurses. For example, a Wikipedia article on colecystectomy should not include information about nursing interventions as that is too narrow a focus (i.e., not of interest to the general reader) for an encyclopedia. However, a NursingWiki article on colecystectomy that describes nursing interventions with research citations would be a great resource.

(But shhhhh: it would also be step on the path to open access and open source textbooks!!)

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