We have received some emails asking us about blogging. It’s Web 2.0…Blogs are quickly replacing the standard web site as we know it.

We’d love to see more CNA’s enter the blogosphere! There aren’t any that we know of. We have an Administrator and a Nursing Home consultant and various advocacy groups who use blogs, and MANY nurses and doctors. But CNA’s? None. CNA’s could use blogs as a way to express frustrations with their work; they can share antidotes about residents; they could learn to advocate for change. Writing (posting) about work experiences, for some, is therapeutic.

A couple very good blog hosts offer free blogs so cost isn’t always an issue.

What is it? How can one have their own blog?

A blog is a web log that has a permanent template that doesn’t need to be altered every time one wishes to update their site. Blogging platforms all have the same basic components:

-Users can choose a theme or look and personalize it with images, links, fonts and colors.

-Users can update their blog as often as they wish without worrying about the template. The template stays the same from page to page, post to post.

-Posts are the material and articles we read at blogs. People (visitors) can leave comments, or thoughts and opinions, on the post. Or not: Some bloggers close off comments. Blogs cannot be kept private; with certain platforms posts can be password protected though. Posts often show up in Google searches for the subject matter written about.

- Blogs keep track of all posts in several ways, called the LOOP: Daily, weekly, monthly archives that can be listed on the “front page” of the site; posts are also organized by categories the owner determines ahead of time. Links to other blogs are called BLOGROLLS. Users can link to any site on the Internet, as well as pages within their blog.

-Bloggers can get feedback via comments. Visitors can leave comments that are open to anyone, or only to registered users. Many comments are spam though as we have to delete these.

There are many blogging platforms, or programs/software to use for blogging. Most are web based and many a free. FaceBook and My Space are not blogs and should never be confused with real blogs. These are social networking sites. There is a big difference between the two. We advise CNA’s to steer clear of FaceBook and MySpace.

Blogger is by far the free platform of choice for beginners. It’s simple; free, fairly easy to use and recognized by everyone. Google offers this service. I highly recommend Blogger for starts.

WordPress is the other free web based service. Users are somewhat limited to what they can include in side bars and template choices. But for those interested in pure blogging, this is a great service. WP offers the same choices as Blogger and many more options.

This site uses WordPress as it’s platform. We have a hosted site here, and we paid for the design you see. It’s pretty cheap compared to what we used to pay for a regular web site, and it’s much more flexible and easy to maintain. WordPress itself is free open source software. When you purchase hosting service, they install it on their servers and you use it.

Now for some basic but very important information about the use of blogs…

One has to decide whether to use a nickname or their real name when blogging. There are pros and cons to both. Pros include credibility and a lack of fear for free speech rights. Cons include potentially getting into trouble with employers,including losing one’s job; also- putting your name out there on the Internet exposes you to millions of others. If you value your privacy, use a nickname. Also, set up a web based email account at GMAIL. You’ll never run out of storage and you can use a blog based nick name…and keep all blog related emails in one place. GMAIL is very secure. And free.

Here at Nursing Assistants.Net we don’t do that…but we don’t use our last names. Most people know of us by our full names anyway. Also we don’t blog about personal work experiences, and specifically about the facilities we work for or the patients we care for. To do so raises ethical and HIPAA concerns.

When blogging about patients or residents, its always best/smart to change identifying traits and info that could allow one to know who is being written about.

Many nurses blog about such things, but they change patient names and the dates of events written about. Some change the sex of the patient when they can…they do these things to prevent readers from KNOWING or taking good guesses at who the patient was. Families are apt to read blogs so we have to be respectful of this.

Many nurses and doctors don’t write about the actual facility or hospital they work for. Instead they are pretty discreet about such things. If you live in a town with one nursing home, and work as an aide, and state this on a blog it won’t take rocket scientist to figure out who YOU are. It would be smarter to say you’re employed at a nursing home in “Southern Florida”, for example, rather than “a nursing home in ABC Township Florida” (which has one nursing home!)– be generic and non specific.

Because blogs are relatively new, management people are somewhat threatened by them. We’ve read stories about people actually being fired for having a blog, and for writing about their work experiences. This seems silly to us, but it is the reality. These things happen to those who identify their employers, name names and write truthful but often damning posts about the leaders. Blogs are not private and anyone can access them; when we write things about a medical or nursing facility it reflects upon the management of said place. We advise not to identify.

Blogging is simple and fun. You have devote some time to it though. If you’re interested in having a blog, set one up and write a few posts. Let others know of your site! Encourage feedback (comments) and visit other blogs and leave comments there. Building an audience of readers takes time and effort. Most blogs have a community of readers who are faithful and will come around several times a week or even daily if there are enough posts.

This is a very short description of blogging. And a call to online CNA’s: Get blogging. We want to read what you’re thinking about. Have a voice and speak up. Let us know if you set up a blog so we can add your site to our blogroll, AKA linking. We will promote new CNA blogs here as well.

Good luck to those who choose to do this. We want to see more CNA bloggers.