For those of you who have never heard of the Shorty Awards that is alright, they are self-described as "The Oscars or Tony awards for Twitter". Basically they recognize the wide range of things that are happening through twitter and should be recognized. Click here to see current nominations and rankings.

This year the TV show Nurse Jacky is pairing up with the Shorty Awards to create a new award for Nurses using twitter. I think this is incredible marketing, but also a great opportunity to take credit where credit is due, for all the hard work nurses are doing. Now I agree with The Truth About Nursing, which is an organization dedicated to improving the way the world portrays nurses in the media, that nurses need better positive public profiles. I see the shorty awards as a clear way to accomplish that.

So for everyone that reads that uses twitter or knows anyone with an account they can bug, I highly encourage you to go to http://shortyawards.com/category/nurse/ and nominate a nurses for their outstanding use of social media. I think we should all really through our weight behind an exceptional nurses, not just an exceptional social media user who happens to be a nurse. I have already nominated a few people, but I'm going to suggest two for your consideration.

1) @NurseKama. She is a clinical nurse specialist in a real patient care environment, and she spends her "spare" time teaching health care professionals and organizations about the power of social media.

2) @OnlineNursing. She is a clinician, working as a Nurse Practitioner, she is a teacher and most importantly she provides the best examples of how to integrate social media into nursing education.