☆ Developing the Healthcare and Nursing Forum - Your Views Needed! ☆

Hi,

Just to introduce myself and explain what I’m doing here first!

I have been the medicine forum moderator for almost 1 year now. About 6 weeks ago, my powers were extended to cover the whole of the uni forums. Due to my interests in the area, I will be particularly caring for the “Medical, Health and Life Sciences University Courses” forum areas and plan to work with members of each area to help them develop their subforum and improve the resources available.

I have a few questions for all of you, which I would greatly appreciate your feedback on as well as any other suggestions you may have for developing your forum.


1) What do/don’t you like about the forum?

2) The forum name and description – do they work? One particular reason I have for asking this is due to the number of threads I’ve had to move from the umbrella forum which would fit into this area.
a. If you don’t think they work, can you suggest anything that would work better?
b. Also, which courses do you think should be in the subforum?

3) What are the most frequently asked questions in the forum?
a. In the medicine forum, these questions are dealt with in a forum announcement of FAQ and using megathreads (with an informative first post and all similar questions then being merged with this thread). Would this work in Healthcare and Nursing? Which threads would be useful?
b. Organisation in general – any ideas on how we could improve organisation in the forum?

4) Stickied threads – at the moment there are 7 of these in the subforum. From observation, if there are more than about 3 in a subforum, they tend to be ignored.
a. So, which do you think are most useful? Are there others which are needed?
b. Which could be converted to wiki articles?
c. Would a stickied index of useful threads for the forum work so that fewer threads are stuck?

5) Thinking about the wiki for healthcare and nursing
a. What do you think of it at the moment?
b. Are there any additions you think would be useful?
I can help organise additions to the wiki and help people in creating wiki pages, but don’t have the time to create loads of content so are there any volunteers to help with this?

6) Are there any improvements or changes you'd like to see in the healthcare and nursing forum in general? Any suggestions?

6.
An area for current healthcare students, ie to discuss placements, assignments..free from applicants and for all those studying to have an input

Also, I'm sure that prospective students will be interested to read about what we are up to.

I also think it'll be helpful for prospective applicants to look through and will hopefully decrease some of the more repetative threads that could be answered just by looking in that area.

Just picking up on these comments as much use it could be for the applicants, i just hope we don't get overloaded with threads asking what we do on placement, hours etc etc etc..

1. where to begin?
The unorganisation of stickied threads
We can do something about that
Constant repetitive threads- when a simple read or search can be all they need, or even google!
Again, there are things we can do with this
Lack of current student
Bad advice given..or outofdate advice
The last bit we can work on with wiki/megathreads to try and make sure the most up to date advice is available but there's so much bad advice given all over the forum in general that we just need to try and make sure people are given the correct advice as well.
...on reflection there isn't much i like this area, other than its just the course I do, i dont really gain that much out of it as a current student due to the threads from applicants

2. I think Nursing should have its own subforum, physio's another and AHP's their own
A split of nursing from AHP might be possible but I doubt there's enough physio activity to suggest it needs it's own forum. I'll have a look through the forum today/tomorrow to look at the sort of activity in each area at the moment.

3. Megathreads would be very useful, but not too many of them please!
Which would be particularly useful? My thinking was maybe to have an interviews thread for each AHP and an applicants thread for each (though whether all need separate interviews/apps threads I don't know) with an info page on interview questions for each.

4. Ugh the stickies there should be 4 (if the forum was to stay the same) and forgetting mega threads
1. Nursing Applications for 2010 (or whatever year)
2. Physio applications for 2010
3. Radiography Applications 2010
4. NHS bursary querys

You could have wiki articles, but i never look at wiki myself..and i doubt new users would either


5. Theres a wiki? Tbh don't use it, outdated advice
This is something that could be worked on to make sure advice is up to date then find a way of integrating it with the forum to help people find the advice they need more easily.

6.
An area for current healthcare students, ie to discuss placements, assignments..free from applicants and for all those studying to have an input
We would need to demonstrate there is a demand for this before it would be possible - it's actually something I suggested quite a while ago but there just weren't enough current students around then. Not sure what to suggest just now but will have a think of how we might be able to encourage more current students to join in/get involved.

An area for current healthcare students would be nice. There are so many threads for people applying, which is useful for them, but not so much for us.
See above. If we manage to get the main forum more organised, it would make it easier for current students to post threads for others as well though.

A thread each for current students of nursing, SLT, OT, physio etc would be good...
though how many current students are there around at the moment?

Also, I'm sure that prospective students will be interested to read about what we are up to.

I'm not a nursing student yet but I definitely agree there should be an area for current students in each healthcare area to discuss placements/assignments/etc. I also think it'll be helpful for prospective applicants to look through and will hopefully decrease some of the more repetative threads that could be answered just by looking in that area.

There are too many stickies and if I'm looking for something in particular its not always obvious where it could be and most people don't want to look through all the pages to find something that will relate to what they want to know, which I guess is why there are so mnay of the same threads. I think having seperate subforums for physio, nursing, OT, etc could help clear this up as well.
Have a look at my responses to subcutaneous. I need to go through the forum and have a look at the proportions of each different AHP represented etc to look at the demand.

Overall I agree with what Subcutaneous has said.

I don't know how feasible it is, but what about something like "ask a student", whereby prospective students could ask current students questions like that in 1 thread? It could be a bit like the PS helper thread, where the relevant students are notified of the question, but it's not hidden? Does that make sense?

Have a go at starting up an 'ask a current nursing/OT/PT/etc thread' and see how it goes. I think at the moment it would just have to be in the standard forum and the current students would have to be aware of it. There is a risk you'd just end up with everything that would otherwise have it's own thread being addressed to the current students in there thread where I'd envision it as being more useful for questions about what the course is actually like rather than applications questions.

I agree with pretty much all what Sub has said, and a section for each profession may cut out the amount of repetitive threads.

I also think there should be a nursing applicants 2010, midwife applicants 2010 etc, but I think she's already suggested it?
It's early, I've eaten far too many Nutella pancakes to think straight! :/

DEFFO one for degree vs diploma, it's HUGE debate at the moment and the whole nursing curriculum is going under a major overhaul in the structure of training, registration needs..everything, and it certainly need to be addressed to help applicants make the right decision for them, and keep them up to date with NMC decisions and nursing commission announcements

alot of the stuff in the medicine forum would fit here too. eg: appliant profile (as an applicant i am finding it very hard to find out what actually got people a place on their health care course. eg what experience they had, their grades), the current medic section (but obviously it would be current healthcare student) and nursing/paramedic/speach science applicants.

well really this would be pointless because people will soon not have the choice between the two they will have to do degree. maybe a 'current healthcare appliaction issues' thread would be more helpful.

There just isn't enough people, plus the variety of applicants is so vast, and the competition isn't high enough to warrant a comparison of profiles

Up till 2015, this will still be an issue- and for the mean time needs to be addressed

it would still help because there is still some competion. yea alot of people egt offers but it is hard to get 5 offers. is just helpful thats all. does competion need to come into it?


oxford brookes is starting it 2011. and my college told me that it will be changed by 2012. maybe you are right but how do you know that?

also i did agree with all your other points about changes to the forum

I don't think the applicant profile would be helpful to anyone, there is such a huge variety of different ways to be an RN, different courses and branches threre isn't enough people...plus it's just the same as showing off. Most people can get an interview- thats where the real crux of the decision lies in applications.

Oh and if you read the prime ministers nursing commission, the plan is for the last intake of the diploma to be 2013, meaning they'll qualify on a diploma 2015-2017 depending on the course, and it affects many people up till then, whether to top up post-reg, transfer course during, finances and application decisions...may be 3 years away but its still relevant

Recently theres been quite a lot of threads about Paramedic Courses and I can only see that increasing in the future so I think their own sub forum may be useful. I agree that nurses should have a seperate sub forum because questions about other courses tend to get lost amid the mass of nursing ones. I have to say I rarely see questions about physio so not sure why they would need their own forum.

As for Wiki I created the 'Becoming a Paramedic' wiki page and have found that often no-one notices it exists until I point it out to them. I'll be happy to keep that page up for a bit even though I'm no longer a student paramedic. I'd also be happy to do one about Healthcare Assistants (if one doesnt already exist) as I'm going to be starting as one soon. I have to say I find the wiki really confusing. I've tried using it a few times recently and given up because I can never find what I want.

I think the 'How to cope on placements' thread would be a good one to put on wiki. Maybe make a sticky with the links to useful wiki pages on? Would be a good place to put the regularly asked questions without cluttering up the board and when a new question gets asked it can be added.

I do have to say though that in general the forum name as it is is a bit ambiguous. It doesn't surprise me that a lot of people post in the main forum when they should be posting here.

Edit: I've just started a healthcare assistant wiki page. Will add more to it tomorrow.

Just a comment, you mention healthcare asisstants..just had a gander at the wiki, so inaccurate information there, could I actually edit it a bit? Nothing major but it may give a wrong impression about the role, and ofcourse 'HCA' is an umbrella term for many roles aswell