An Introduction to the
Internet's Value and
Great Potential in
Communication and
Research in Nursing
By Peter Morris RGN, BSc. (Hons), PGCE,
Joacim Larsen RN, Doctoral Student and
Chrissy Giles, Ass BMT-Co-ordinator
This article attempts
to give an overview of
the Internet and its
value in
communica-tion, education and
research in nursing
and it is mainly aimed
at those nurses that
are not familiar with its
use.
With all the jargon
associated with the
Internet such as the
information
'Super-highway' and
'Cyber-space' it is important
to define exactly what
the Internet is.
What is the 'Internet'?
The Internet is a network of
networks, combined to create a massive computer
super-net-work, linking computers all over
the world (hence the term
'Su-perhighway'). It originated in
the late 1960's from an Ameri-can military proj ect intended to
provide reliable
communica-tions in the event of a nuclear
war (l). The network started
with just four computers but grew rapidly over the next few years to improve
communica-tions between academic and
military institutions. It is now estimated that in excess of 100
million computers are
connect-ed to the Internet and the num-beris growing every year
Generally, all you need is a computer connected to a
tele-phone line or a modem and associatred software.
Graphic design by Chrissy Giles, London.
EBMT annual meeting in
Aix-les-Bains, France 1997].
Incred-ibly subscription has doubled
every year since 1988. Latest
figures show that 159 countries are now connected.
Who is connected?
The Internet connects many
aca-demic institutions. It also con-nects commercial companies that as well as advertising give advice on ordering, product in-formation and support. There are numerous libraries, hospi-tals, charities and government offices on-line. Internet cafés and private individuals are also connected, including, (not
ne-cessarily in order of
impor-tance), the President ofthe
Unit-ed States, the British Prime
Min-ister and even the King of Swe-den and the Queen of England. Many nurses (if not already connected) may in fact work for organisations that are connect-ed, and may only require a fur-ther connection cable and
soft-ware for their computers.
Other-wise they should be able to ac-cess the Internet via a library or Internet café. Generally, all you need is a computer connected to a telephone line or a modem and associated software.
E Mail, what is it and
why use it?
E Mail or electronic mail
al-lows you to send or receive
writ-ten messages to and from
any-one connected to the Internet
and is the easiest of the
Inter-net's facilities to use. It is very
fast allowing you to send or
receive messages all over the
globe in a matter ofminutes (2).
Instead ofusing standard postal services you simply type a mes-sage on your computer, press
send and off it goes (3). It is
relatively inexpensive, costing
only the price of a local
tele-phone call. Unlike a teletele-phone
call it does not require the
atten-tion of both parties at the same time (4). The same message can
be sent to thousands of
individ-uals (i frequired)
simultaneous-ly and in a computer readable
format (hence much better and
cheaper than a fax). With an
E Mail connection, you can also
communicate with nurses all
over the world, who while per-sonally unknown to you, might share the same professional
in-terests as you. It is possible to
communicate with other nurses
in a particular speciality via
E Mail. There are currently 20-30 lists that discuss nursing
is-sues. There are also
multipro-fessional lists and lists where
others discuss issues of mutual interest. For examples of lists see table 2.
Nursenet
Nursenet is one of the largest
nursing list servers with over
1 600 subscribers from 23 dif-ferent countries (28th of Febru-ary 1997). Like most list serv-ers it has a large North Ameri-can bias with over 1 200
sub-scribers in North America.
There were 72 nurses listed in Australia and 208 in Canada, whereas most European Coun-tries were only represented by 0-16 nurses. It covers a very diverse range ofnursing related
subjects from HIV transmission,
clinical nursing practice to even
humour in nursin o .
By sending a message to
Nursenet and several ofthe oth-er nursing list soth-ervoth-ers it is pos-Sible to contact several
thou-sand nurses at the same time. For instance we (at Hammer-smith Hospital) recently
ar-ranged a nurse recruitment
cam-paign for our department and
sent out an advertisement to
sev-eral list servers at the same time.
One of the replies (Joacim Lar-sen) asked ifwe were interested
in employing Swedish nurses (a
very timely enquiry as our Se-nior Nurse was in fact in Swe-den recruiting nurses that very
week). I (Peter Morris) was then
Table l. Examples of E Mail lists for nurses.
List
CNS-L GLOBALRN IVTHERAPY NRSINGED NURSING-L NURSNET NURSRES SNURSE-LDescription
Clinical Nurs Specialist Cul ture-and-Nurs ing
I.V. therapy nurses list
Nursing educators list
Nursing informatics list
Discourse of diverse nursing
issues
Nurses Research list
For undergraduate students
For more information about E Mail lists and how to subscribe - check out the
following WWW pages:
http://www.nursingworld.org/listserv/listserv.htm http://www.nurse.netænrs calli
able to reply that we certainly
were interested and was able to
pass on the contact details.
With-in 48 hours our Senior nurse
was able to interview a number of Swedish applicants with a particular interest in the speci-ality (several of whom we have subsequently employed). Just another example of the speed and range of E Mail.
The World Wide Web
(WWW)
The World Wide Web (WWW)
is another very useful resource
for nurses and can carry words, pictures, video clips and even
sounds. Its name comes from the links made between its
1 00,00() or so different
resour-ces which are connected together in a web ofinformation (2). It is
easy to use and tremendously
powerful. For the nurse seeking
information it offers access to
medical institutions and on line
journals such as the Nursing
Standard, British Medical
Jour-nal and Bone Marrow
Trans-plantation. It also includes
medi-cal and nursing databases such as Medline and CINAHL. Hos-pitals, universities, nursing Table 2. Examples of WWW sites for nurses.
Site
Nursino sites
The Fine Art of Nursing
Nurses' Call
Nursinonet Virtual Nurse
Computers in Nursing Weird nursing tales
Other sites
Oncolink
SPRI
"Socialstyrelsen"
Helsenett (in Norwegian)
Ftee MEDLINE
WWW address
http://ally.ios.com/—webster/nurse.thml http://www.nurse.net/—nrs_eall http://www.nursingnet.org http://virtualnurse.com http://www.cini.com/cin/cin.htm http://users.twave.net/texican/default.htm http://cancer.med.upenn.edu http://www.spri.se http://www.SoS.se http://web.sol.no/hel.senett/ http://www.infotrieve.com/housecall/cgi-bin/search.plemployment agencies and
nursing unions are also contact-able via the WWW. For exam-ples of WWW sites see table 2.
To summarise, the Internet is
relatively inexpensive to use and very fast (although after midday the majority of the US users join
in, and this can slow down trans-fer times). It is, at least
potential-ly, very up to date. The wealth of information covers almost every subject you can think of and it is accessible 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
Disadvantages?!
It is however, not without its
disadvantages. The majority of the Internet is uncontrolled, not peer reviewed and may hold mis-leading and out ofdate informa-tion of variable quality. There is
potential conflict between
pa-tients and their health care
pro-viders, particularly where
pa-tients have access to in formation
regarding more up-to-date treat-ments and care than health care professionals have the resources or experience to implement. This
has the potential for increased
legal action (6).
Conclusion and
Clinical Usefulness
To conclude, the Internet is already the largest information
resource in the World and
grow-vÅRD nr 2 1997
ing every day. It is, therefore, imperative that nurses are not
left behind in this great
techno-logical advance but take full
advantage of the free exchange of information that the Internet
provides. It offers nurses an unparalleled opportunity to
com-municate nationally and inter-nationally and acquire clinical, educational and research
mate-rials that can only, ultimately
benefit patient care.
References
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.Millman A, Lee N, Kealy K.
The Internet. British Medical
Journal
Bowles N. Born to be wired.
Nursing Management
1994;
Tomaiulo N. Accessing nursing resources on the Internet. Computers in
Nursing
Pallen M. Electronic mail.
British Medical Journal 1995;311: 1487-90.
Armstrong L, Morris P. The
value ofthc Internet in BMT:
a patient's perspective. Bone
Marrow Transplant 1997; 19
(Suppl.
6. Coirera E. The Internet's challenge to health care provision. British Medical
Journal
