When you have an idea there are two things you can do, take action or do nothing. Most people with innovative ideas or thoughts on how to make things better choose the latter, because there are many reasons people come up with to not do anything. One of the things that holds people back is the fact that they can't do things perfectly or they think it won't be good enough.

Looking back at the first interview of Nursing Ideas with Doris Grinspun I cringe a little bit. I recorded it with my Macbook at the time and you can hear the laptop fan spin up when it got a bit to hot. The we bite at the time was pretty rough around the edges, there are also typos and bad grammar in almost every post. If I was a teacher and had to grade Nursing Ideas I would have given myself a D- if I was feeling a bit generous. Today, I'd probably say it is up to a B-. This may because I try to be a harsh critic to my own work, but also because I see a lot of ways I can improve it. From sound, editing, lighting, web design, layout and the list goes on, there are all sorts of other things I want to change. However, Nursing Ideas has always been my sandbox. A place that I could experiment try things out and hopefully make something that was interesting.

While I may not have everything the way I want. I am always trying to find small ways to improve. Today I'm happy to say one of the things I've been thinking about is updating some of the branding. The original nursing ideas logo was a bad drawing I sketched out on my computer so I'd have something. It was sloppy, but it could work. Recently I finally took the time and invested in a new logo. As I begin to speak to more organizations, publish more articles, and help produce more podcasts for other organization I want to have a brand and site that reflects the quality of people I work with and interview. I have another logo I can use that reflects the older logo, which will be used for a few promotional items I'm working on and podcasts. However, in print and affiliation this is the logo that I'm planning to use for branding Nursing Ideas.

I hope you like it, but more importantly I want to thank you. Thank you for watching and commenting on videos, for sharing videos and telling friends. Nursing Ideas was never meant for me and I can only hope that others get something from it. Hopefully this new logo helps improve the looks of the site. I want you to know I do take it seriously and plan to continue to work on improve the site, recording more podcasts and creating more content.

For those of you who missed it, Google Health was a personal health record (a place to track your health information) that launched a few years ago and Google recently decide to slowly shut down.

Now what I mean by the first statement I made is that Google got greedy, and they forgot how the internet was built. They know how the internet works, but they forgot that the internet was build by passionate individuals using their spare time to develop, code and grow sites of their interest. Unfortunately, their approach to Google Health was an corporate or private development style of development. They tried to work with hospitals, insurance agencies and a few other businesses and focused on trying to bring in their health information rather than really trying to work on the user interface and generating a market for users to track their health.

What I mean by this is what Walt Mossberg talked about at TEDMED. Google should have focused on pushing the technology companies, the engineers and developers that are making consumer devices to adopt standards and practice that allow users to aggregate their personal health information.

Slowly we are seeing devices, some of which I have bought and love, that are emerging that allow users to track their health (sleep, weight), fitness (blood pressure, speed), diet (calorie count) and exercise (running, biking) and the list is growing. This is the data the people are slowly starting to build, collect and become passionate about.

I think that Google should have capitalized on aggregating this type of information first in the PHR, or at least in equal parts. Sure it is fascinated, especially as a healthcare professional, the records we keep on patients, and the fancy labs and tests we order. But that is not what our patients need to see and learn about. They need to get better at monitoring their diet, doing more exercise and connecting the dots with their symptoms. Clearly PatientsLikeMe is the leader in the disease focus of PHR, but I think this is the same problem as our healthcare systems (world wide), we focus on disease not health.

If we can get patients passionately monitoring their personal health data, and start to pair that with the medical knowledge and insights we have into their disease, then we will have a useful PHR.

Overall 4/5 ★★★★☆

Easy to Use ★★★★★

Clinically Relevant ★★★★★

Practical for Students ★★★★☆

Opening up that app is simple as any of them, once you open the app the functionality is immediately easy to understand. As soon as it has launched you can easily find all the calculations at your finger tips, or if you want to customize it there are also some other features.

Since there is a long list of medications MediMath allows you to create a favourites list. This means that if are working with any particular set due to client population or your work setting you can save yourself the time of scrolling through the list every time. If you are nurse, physician or resident working on any other floor there are also pre-built lists that you can use based on setting and organs. These may not be perfect, but they do get you off to a great start for easy to use lists.

The other feature that I think clinicians will really love is that there is a 'recent' tab. This means that when you calculated a score when rounding on a patient and then need to chart it you won't have to put in all the values again. Likewise if a patient or their family member asks you to recall one of the values you have it easily on hand.

This application is not just for medical rating systems, you can also do IV Rate, Dose, and Calculations using this app*. All of which are extremely important and one on a regular basis.

The reason I like this application over some of the other applications that have built in calculators is because of the apps simplicity. It does not try to be a swiss army knife; it does one thing, calculations, and it does that very well! Now, the only reason I was able to deduct some points for this app, is although it does a lot, it does not have any educational information. So for a clinician I think this app is a 5/5 for a clinician, however I want to make sure students know it is a great tool, not an educator so make sure you don't rely on it to much before you are ready.

*By no means do I think that this, or any other application is a substitute for learning the basics. You really should be able to calculate a drip rate if you don't have your iPhone within reach, and so you understand what you are actually doing!

Irmajean Bajnok RN PhD

Director of International Affairs and Best Practice Guidelines - Registered Nurses Association of Ontario

Sitting down with Irmajean Bajnok we discuss her experience and how she came to be Director of the IA-BPG. We talk about how the BPG came to be but also about how she hopes that they are able to support nurses in the workplace and create a health work environment for them to practice in.

Recently the RNAO won the an award from Sigma Theta Tau International, for Practice Academe Innovation Collaboration, below I posted a short video I took in Indianapolis of them accepting their award. Enjoy!

Links

• RNAO Best Practice Guidelines (BPG) Professionalism in Nursing
• Health Work Environments Best Practice Guidelines
• RNAO PhD Fellowships
• Condensed Guidelines for PDA's
• Video on Kingston General Hospital implementation of BPGs
• REISS Project
• Submit Idea for BPG & Sign up to be a BPG Stakeholder

Question

• Irmajean Bajnok: Do you have any ideas for BPG that you would find useful? How many of you have downloaded the PDA version of the guidelines?
• Robert Fraser: What format of information is best for you to use knowledge in practice (i.e print, video, audio, PDA, etc)?