Here is a little bit about Courtney and her husband. Courtney is a freelance writer. Her husband, Brandon, is an Emergency Department travel nurse. Courtney travels with Brandon across the country. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, photography, and painting. She keeps a blog about their travel nursing experiences at http://www.brandonandcourtney.blogspot.com, and is currently working on a book detailing the ins and outs of travel nursing.

• Travel Nursing Resources
• Nursing Information
• Nursing Resources
• Nursing Organizations
• Nursing Education
• Nursing Niche Sites
• Nursing Social Networks
• Travel Nursing Blogs
• Nursing Supplies
• Nursing Other
• Hospital Information
• Moving Resources
• Travel Resources
• Housing Information
• City Information
• Settling In Tips
• Day-to-Day Living Tips
• Personal Health Tips
• Financial Resources
• Social Networking Resources

Take a look and report back with any sites you think they missed.

Let me tell you a little about myself… I am 24 years old, married to the man of my dreams for a little over 4 years now, mommy to a 2 1/2 year old boy named Joshua.  I was born and raised in Omaha, NE (Go Huskers!).  I have moved a little bit over the past 2 1/2 years due to my husband’s job, he’s a musician in a “boyband” called VYBE,  and just recently moved back to NE because I missed it so much.  I am currently starting classes and headed back to school to become a NURSE!!!  I have grown up around nurses all my life and I have always been fascinated with surgery and medical abnormalities (weird, I know).  My top 3 preferred fields to work in are NICU, OR, and Pediatrics. I don’t plan on being a travel nurse, I’ve planted some pretty deep roots here but I guess we’ll see how that turns out once I graduate.

So that’s a little about me.  I’m a brand new blogger.  So hopefully you’ll like it.  I will be getting some inspiration from my fellow co-workers in the Housing Department Katie, Kim, Courtney, and Nicki.  Looking forward to blogging with you.

This is the final article from Beth’s series of guest posts. Beth maintains a fantastic blog at PixelRN.com where she writes about her experiences in nursing as well as social networking and website design/development.

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I recently was fortunate enough to attend Blog World Expo 2008, the world’s largest blogging and new media conference. Part of my agenda was to meet with other health care bloggers like Kim from Emergiblog, and Dr. Val Jones from GetBetterHealth, to discuss the possibility of putting together a track dedicated to health care bloggers at next year’s conference. We also met with Rob Halper, who oversees the Johnson & Johnson Youtube channel, and Shane Pike, of Health Care Today. Together we brainstormed ways that we could make this happen. The result? A health care blogger track is a sure thing for next year (September 2009), and it’s going to be the first event of its kind that will bring all types of health care bloggers together. Potential topics include: HIPAA issues, using blogging to affect change in health care policy, and using your blog to leverage your expertise in your field. If you’re interested, Emergiblog has a poll up where you can see the list of topics and vote on the best ones.

One of our goals for the health care blogger’s track is to include all types of bloggers in the health care arena. That includes nurses, doctors, students, EMTs, technicians, medical librarians, social workers, pharmacists, researchers, and patients. One of the great things about health care blogging is that it brings together people from all specialties, and the result is one of the largest (and liveliest) ongoing multidisciplinary discussions on the state of health care. If you are still new to this idea of people blogging about health care, I would urge you to check out Grand Rounds. It’s a weekly roundup of some of the best blog posts with a medical theme.

Blog World Expo is a worthwhile and energizing experience for any type of blogger. If you have a blog, whether it be about nursing, or any thing else, I would urge you to go. Presentations included topics such as how to make money from your blog, building readership on your blog, and how to analyze your blog statistics. One of the best things about Blog World Expo was getting to meet other bloggers face to face. I had known of Kim and Dr. Val through their blogs for a couple of years now, but this was the first time I had a chance to sit down and have a conversation with them. It was a very energizing experience.

If you’d like to learn more about Blog World Expo and the health care blogger’s track, stop by Emergiblog and leave a comment with your email. Kim, the author of Emergiblog, is putting together an email list and will be updating us through out the year on this event. Hope to see you there!

Here is Part 2 of Beth’s series on Social Networking for travel nurses. Beth maintains a fantastic blog at PixelRN.com where she writes about her experiences in nursing as well as social networking and website design/development.

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In this post, we’ll take a look at Facebook, Blogger, and WordPress.

Facebook is kind of a grab-bag for all of your social networking activity. You can create a profile, upload photos, write notes, and post links, and find people that you may know from high school, college, or previous places of employment (among other things.) If you are a traveling nurse and still aren’t using facebook, I suggest you sign up. It’s a very convenient and fun way of staying in touch with people.

There are also social sites dedicated strictly to nurses and people who are interested in nursing. Nursinglink is one of them. It contains many of the same features that you see on Facebook but centers around nursing.

If you are really ambitious about social networking you can start your own blog. What is a blog, exactly? The original word comes from web + log, and the first blogs were kind of like personal journals. They date back to earlier in this decade. These days a blog can be about anything you want it to be. It can be a personal diary, a way to update your friends and family on where you are traveling, or it can even be a collection of articles that you have written on a chosen subject. Travel nursing and blogging go hand in hand, and there is a great community of nurses who blog out there. Setting up a blog is really very easy to do, and free as well. You can start a free blog at wordpress.com or blogger.com. Each of these sites have templates that you can choose from and fairly easy to use interfaces.

There’s a large community of nurses who blog. You can find a partial list of them at OrientedX3.com. There’s also a biweekly roundup of some of the best nursing blog posts called Change of Shift. You can see the latest edition of Change of Shift at crzegrl.net.

In part three we’ll take a look at Twitter, a micro-blogging tool, and LinkedIn, a social site for professionals.