Weblog

The NurseCentral community is continually growing are we are getting very close to 1500 signed up members and 2500 forum topics and replies.

In recognition of the great support NurseCentral has received, we have managed to secure 2 DVDs of the highly successful SBS TV Series - "Remote Area Nurse".

So we are going to give away 1 DVD each to the 1500th Member of NurseCentral and the member who posts the 2500th message. We will post it free with an exclusive NurseCentral Lanyard to anywhere in Australia.

We will also conduct a Gold Key Member drive over this year, as the membership grows, so do the costs of maintaining the site. So if you would like to support the NurseCentral site, please consider Gold Key Membership.

This week I have spent quite a bit of time researching and updating the Links section of the website. I believe NurseCentral has the most complete library of Australian Nursing Links on the web, please let me know if someone else has a more complete list. We now have a selection of 96 links to Australian Nursing and Midwifery colleges, associations and organisations.

If you know of a site that we haven't got listed, please submit it for inclusion to make sure we are continuously the most up-to-date resource on the internet.

Good news for SA nurses this week as their Enterprise Bargaining deal was agreed giving them a 14.5% payrise over the next 3 years. I am especially looking forward to seeing the details on the career structure and country staffing methodology.

I have been really pleased to see that the forums are gaining more momentum and am glad that there is some good discussion and assistance given to various members by the community of NurseCentralites.

Darren

It's been quite a while since I have updated the blog, I guess I'm just not very verbose :)

NurseCentral continues to grow every week and I welcome all our new members. Some of the forums are very interesting and certainly a number of people are getting some good help from colleagues. You might be interested to know that well over 2000 visits per month to the site (and growing) and we are approaching 600 registered users.

Here are a few things that we have done over the past number of months in readiness for some wider exposure and growth on the site. We have registered the NurseCentral trademark to protect our future. NurseCentral is now ready for a wider launch and we see great potential in the positioning of NurseCentral in the nursing marketplace.

We have upgraded the core software that NurseCentral runs on, eZ publish, to ensure that we are providing the best possible platform and providing a stable system for your important contributions.

We are now looking at the next steps, and from the poll, it seems the majority of members want to share some of their photos online, so we are looking at how best to enable this within our resources.

Also, International Nurses Day is upon us and I congratulate all nurses and midwives for their dedication to the profession and their commitment to improving health - Well Done!

Watch out for a bonus for all current members on International Nurses Day.

Darren

Most activity for us recently has been researching, testing, installing, configuring and testing a suitable email list (newsletter) program that is compatible with the software we are running NurseCentral on.
We are very close to finalising it and should have our first HandOver out hopefully by the end of this week. If you have previously used the Subscribe field on the left side of the page, we will import your details into the newsletter database. Subscribing will now be a part of the sign-up process and for existing users there is the ability to tick a box when you "Edit your Details" which will subscribe you to the list.

I will use the Newsletter to keep members up to date with what is going on from NurseCentral. It will include recent news items and popular forum threads and upcoming events, along with other information from time to time. Naturally I welcome suggestions of what you might like included. A key feature I wanted to be able to include was keeping an archive of the HandOver on the website, so you will be able to view previous editions by clicking on the HandOver link.

October's Forum Thread of the Month went to Sassiegirl, I will continue this for a few months to see how it goes as a small stimulus for encouraging discussion. The winner will receive a NurseCentral Lanyard.

It's been a while since my last blog - I have never been a great diary writer. The biggest development for NurseCentral over the past month or so has been the design, ordering and delivery of our new Lanyards . I think they look great and I hope they spread around the country and become a useful item for members along with the added bonus of promoting NurseCentral along the way.

The website statistics are encouraging and continue to rise. New members are joining each week and we welcome you along. Not everyone has time to visit the site everyday but it would be great to hear about the issues that you are facing in your work, or innovations, new ideas you have or anything that you think other nurses and midwives would be keen to hear about or discuss. It is fun to lurk on the sides of a forum discussion, but it is even more enjoyable when you dive in and get involved, so I would encourage all the "lurkers" to join up or login and get involved. I understand forums are a new world to a lot of nurses, but give it a go anyway - your contributions will definitely be welcomed.

I have been busy renovating some office space and moving in over the past couple of months and it is great to finally be in a dedicated office space again. I've also been doing some work in the Riverland region of South Australia the last month - I always enjoy getting back to the country and working with rural health workers, it's a great environment.

Look forward to having a chat soon.

Darren

I am very pleased with the progress the site is making and appreciate the support and encouragement I am getting from members. An article appeared in the ANJ this month and it is good to see a number of members signing up as a result of reading the article.

I am really pleased to see some forum discussion occurring and when you see something that you have an opinion about or have an issue you would like to discuss, jump in.

I will be attending the Geriaction Conference in Sydney the next couple of days (11th and 12th August) and will have a Trade Stand for both Aged Care Quality Association and NurseCentral. So if you are going along, come by and say hello.

We have sorted out the permissions issue for Silver Member and Gold Key Holder members so now if you are a Silver Member and have an Avatar or Forum Signature it will no longer be visible to other members. It wont be lost however, so if you become a Gold Key Holder it will automatically appear next to all the posts you have made.

Darren

I am feeling quite pleased with our first month of live activity. Some of this month's activity statistics are quite interesting and I feel encouraged that nurses in Australia are wanting this kind of site and hopefully this will provide you what you are looking for.

We now have 98 members registered - didn't quite make the triple figures first month in, but that is a great start. We have had over 450 individual visitors who have viewed over 16,000 pages. Our busiest times this month are Tues and Thur between 1100 and 1300.

The vast majority of visitors are from Australia, but we have also had visitors from New Zealand, UK, USA as well as a number of other European and Baltic countries.

We have had a little bit of activity on the forums, but I am guessing that most members have not had much experience using forums, so I am certainly looking forward to that part of the site increasing. We have put up over 50 news articles relevant to nurses and midwives and had 10 events registered coming from all around Australia.

Our most visited areas of the site are the Forums, followed by the Events and News. Welcome to our first sponsor - Victorian Nurse Specialists - it would be great if members and visitors supported our sponsors as they will help the site to remain viable. If you see something that interests you in the Google Ads or Amazon, click through as these also help a little.

Thank you all for your encouraging words and support and particularly those who are referring friends to the site. If you find the site valuable, please refer your friends and colleagues and print out the poster and hang it in your staff room. Thanks everyone - Darren

After many hours, days, weeks and months of toil NurseCentral is finally becoming a reality. Our first foray into advertising appeared today in the Nursing Review and I welcome everyone who has found us that way.

Search Engines are also starting to refer to us now, so we should start to see traffic steadily increasing. Thank you to those who have given us some encouragement and early feedback, we have made a few changes as a result of some of that feedback. Of course the success of this site will be in the exchange of ideas and support through the forums, so don't be shy and post away.

Welcome to my blog. I thought I would kick off the blogs by keeping you up to date with what is changing on NurseCentral on a semi-regular basis.
Today (Friday 15th April 2005) we opened up the site to live beta testing.
There are a few known bugs and issues and probably dozens of as yet undiscovered ones.

We are keen to encourage new members to help us test out the site, so we are giving away Gold Key Holder status to all members who join up before 30 June 2005. Normal Fees will be $30 a year after that, but you can still access all the important features of the site without paying. You wont be able to contribute to the forums unless you join up (Free) but there has to be some accountability to publicly viewable forums.

Anway, welcome to NurseCentral and I hope you get as much enjoyment from using the site as we are having developing it. Let us know what you think in the forums.

Darren