Another swipe at nursing

HULL, United Kingdom—This is not the first time one of my blog entries posted this time of year has opened up along these lines: “I was just preparing to relax for Christmas.” I was, in fact, preparing to do just that—relax—but my wife failed to censor the letters page of the UK broadsheet newspaper The Daily Telegraph.

The Telegraph has been a serial offender in the fight against university education for nurses, and these attacks often occur at the end of the year, clearly a time when members of the anti-academic nursing brigade think it safe to have their say. The negative correspondence started on 16 December and continued to the 22nd. A great many of us have tried and failed over the years to get contrary opinions published, and it is a minor miracle that Dame Jessica Corner, PhD, dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Southampton, was able to publish such a powerful and evidence-based response.

Not idle

While I did try to spend as much time as I could with the family, one of my projects was to learn, after many bamboozling efforts, how to make a podcast—and I managed to do so! My first effort—ironically about how to make a podcast—is now online. I was so pleased with myself, I decided to learn something else I had seen people do, which was to capture what you are doing onscreen and transmit it as a YouTube link.

I am no stranger to using Articulate Power Points with voice-overs, and have made links to these available in previous entries, but I have always admired online teaching materials where you can follow what the person is doing on the screen and see the mouse tracking and clicking. So, after several downloads of screen capture and editing software—very modestly priced—I made a YouTube presentation on how to make a podcast. I realise I am going to have to vary my material a bit, but it’s a start. Frankly, I am quite pleased with myself, and you should expect more.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International.