The quest in moving from a LPN to RN won’t happen overnight, but there are innumerable resources for better educating yourself so that the steps to furthering your career won’t seem so daunting. There are a variety of resources for nurses and nursing students, all with varying degrees of specificity. Some cater to nursing students and provide studying tools, whereas others center around career opportunities for practicing nurses. The list below encapsulates a more general overview of useful sites for nurses and touches a variety of areas.
- Center For Disease Control
- Professional Organizations
- American Public Health Association
- National Council of State Boards of Nursing
- Household Products Database
- Healthcare Travelbook
- National Institutes of Health
- Medterms
- Medline Plus
- PubMed
The Center for Disease Control is an extremely in-depth site with an alphabetical index of diseases and a variety of health and safety topics that include associated health campaigns. Publications and popular topics are readily accessible and the site provides alerts to issues to be concerned about.
http://www.cdc.gov/
If you’re already a practicing nurse, or have an idea of a concentration you would like to pursue, then looking into joining professional organizations is a great way to get involved, meet people, and open yourself up to networking opportunities. Some organizations include: American Association of Critical-Care Nurses, American Psychiatric Nurses Association, Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, and Oncology Nursing Society.
The American Public Health Organization has been working in public health since 1872 and their chief goal is to protect Americans from serious health threats and advocate prevention-based initiatives. Because of their representation as a collective voice for the American people, it provides a great resource for nurses. Additionally, the publications of the AHPA are particularly renown and include the American Journal of Public Health, The Nation’s Health, and the e-newsletter Inside Public Health.
The National Council of State Boards of Nursing is a non-profit where various state boards can come to form a consensus on a variety of matters. The site is a great source for exam materials for the NCLEX, as well as events, research, and nursing-related policy and legislative efforts.
The Household Products Database is a great resource to quickly access the ingredients and chemical composition of items commonly found in households today. This is particularly good for nurses who need to quickly identify what type of aid to administer in a given situation. The site details bathroom cleaning and office supplies, auto supplies, among other products typically found around the house.
Healthcare Travelbook is a forum for discussing questions and concerns with the traveling and mobile nursing professionals. From a forum to reviews of various travel nursing companies, the site is fairly comprehensive. The resources on the site help those who are interested in becoming traveling nurses make the change and adjustments associated with it.
The National Institutes of Health website is a great tool for researching a variety of health topics along with a number of publications. They keep the public informed on various grants and research news, which is a great way for nurses to stay up-to-date on information in the health community.
Medterms is a medical dictionary, complete with pictures where applicable, along with quizzes, disease index, and a picture dictionary of various ailments. Nurses can use this website to study or to refresh on various sicknesses and diseases.
Medline Plus provides a wealth of content for further investigating various health topics and conditions, along with drugs and supplements, and helpful videos for better understanding different ailments. The bank of knowledge it provides is great for learning and refreshing on material.
PubMed is comprised of more than 22 million medical journal citations from a variety of well-known publications. This is a great resource for working on papers as you complete work to become an RN, but also just to become better informed on the issues currently being discussed and debated in the medical community.