Ten essential blogs student nurses should be reading
There's a number of excellent sources of commentary for student nurses you need to know about. Here are ten of the best to help your studies!
Have you ever thought to yourself: "I should read more, but I don't know where to start"? Here are ten websites I've discovered as a student nurse that are so good, I check them daily. Highly recommended for any nurse!
The King's Fund
From the UK's leading independent health think-tank, the King's Fund blog carries some of the best up-to-the-minute commentary on healthcare policy available anywhere, even competing with the big five medical journals. The very definition of essential reading.
The BMJ Opinion
Speaking of the big five journals, the BMJ blogs are bite-sized commentary with a formidable diversity of topics and opinion. I don't find other medical journals are as consistently relevant for nurses as the BMJ, so there's always interesting discussion here that crosses professional boundaries. Richard Lehman's journal reviews are a particular highlight.
Evidently Cochrane
The Cochrane Collaboration are all for making evidence accesible, which has led to the birth of this excellent blog summarising clinical evidence in easy-to-digest pieces. Don't let the plain language fool you, this is some of the most robust professional knowledge you could hope to add to your practice.
NHS Choices - Behind The Headlines
Health science is routinely distorted and misunderstood in news reports. The Behind The Headlines blog brings a fierce scientific glare to the hyperbole, making it useful not just for your own understanding, but also insight for how service-users might pick up dangerous misinformation.
Nuffield Trust
Another highly regarded health think-tank, commentary from the Nuffield Trust offers some invaluable analysis of healthcare. John Appleby in particular is a renowned health economist and definitely someone who deserves your attention.
The Health Foundation
Another of the big independents, the Health Foundation blog sits right alongside the quality output from the King's Fund and Nuffield Trust.
QualityWatch
A joint project from the Health Foundation and Nuffield Trust, QualityWatch makes a horde of health statistics more accessible. The site as a whole is a triumph of infographics and data communication, with the blog commentary being an excellent tour guide and focus.
BPS Research Digest
From the British Psychological Society, their Research Digest blog covers recent advances in psychology, very often relevant to thinking about service-user behaviours. I particularly love the neuro-myth articles that debunk common fallacies, with more than a few that student nurse's suffer under (please stop asking about learning styles, that is not a thing...).
OurNHS
OpenDemocracy is a site that hosts top-tier journalism with a strong spirit of independence, which makes their NHS coverage a uniquely valuable counterpoint to mainstream news.
QNI blog
The Queen's Nursing Institute is a highly regarded UK community nurse organisation and their blog is a great way to keep up with the work of their members.
So there you have it, ten superb sources for nursing and no log-in or subscription needed for any of them!
If you want to effortlessly keep up with all of these blogs from a single app, I highly recommend signing up to a newsreader like Inoreader and then adding the nurseAdvance blog bundle with one click. It's that easy! This will subscribe you to updates from all the above, notifying you as soon as content is published.
It baffles me why universities don't appear to offer reading bundles like this for students, but on the other hand several of these blogs no longer provide their own feed - if you'd like to find out how I taught myself some basic coding to solve that problem, you can read about it here.