By Nigel Freeney on January 2nd, 2009
Sometimes we make mistakes and get away with it and sometimes we make mistakes that everyone can see or that someone sees and tells lots over other people.
I get the Telegraph Perspective published by telegraph.co.uk. I like the telegraph editorial on the whole but the edition of Telegraph Perspective published on the 5th Decmber made me chuckle in these times of editorial doziness (lets not mention the BBC… Jonathan Ross & Russell Brand).
Part of the email was this:
Under the Personal Finance section
Christmas gifts that will keep on giving
Teresa Hunter says opening a bank account for a child or giving shares or bonds is far more practical than a present that will not last beyond the festive season.
“uumm Hello… not sure what planet you’re on, but if many shares maintained their value up to Christmas and beyond I would have been surprised.”
But still I’m not a financial genius as demonstrated by the catastrophic devaluation of my pension fund – so I guess I will be working until I am 105 just to pay of the interest on my mortgage!! At least the bank will have a nice inheritance to look forward too.
By Nigel Freeney on January 2nd, 2009
I read in the Daily Mail recently that NHS staff are to get humour training to brighten up the wards…
Back in the Stone Ages when I did my training i.e. pre-project 2000 I got berated for suggesting such an idea. I was obviously way ahead of my time.
We were asked to do the old standard essay about the roles of a nurse and I suggested that a new could be the Nurse as a comedian. I indentified the role postive attitude has on healing and how laughing causes the release of endomorphins and endokinins but alas it didn’t tickle my tutors funny bone.
I was obviously not going to take it lying down so I did a care study on the care of a patient with an above knee amputation. Obviously and rightly a very sombre thing to write about – I decorated the front cover with a hand drawn image of a bandaged thigh and called it….
“Stumped for a Title?”
That possibly seems a little callous but part of the problem with the care of patients with amputations, or ill patients generally, can be the difficulty of communication in terms of the
practical and emotional issues about their condition.
I’m guessing there are one or two of you who have suggested that a leg amputee “hop out of bed” or said something equally embarrassing like”Right Mr Jones where’s you other slipper?”
These things happen and rather than putting up barriers to the patients progress it’s better to use that as an opening to invite the patient to discuss how they feel about the changes to their body and how they will manage their lives or their deaths.
By Nigel Freeney on November 16th, 2008
Despite my best intentions workload and family life got the better of me. I went independent in February of 2007 after working for the same person in various roles for about 7 years.
Inevitably the first couple of years of a new business require a great deal of effort and time. Things have gone well on the whole and despite the bleakness of the current financial landscape I feel very positive about what can be achieved.
Just for Nurses has continued to develop and grow and we have been able to give away over £1,800 worth of prizes to our members. The JFN Nursing Jobs Board continues to grow and we have had over 500 live jobs showing. (Thanks to Hayden and Colin at Brainhunter UK and the guys at Brainhunter Canada for great support.)
The Nursing Agencies List has gone from strength to strength, seeing over 5,000 unique visitors per week.
The SEO management has lead to 4 out of the 9 active sites gaining a PR5 in Google – so we must be doing something right!
There’s a lot more to do in 2009 – it’s looking like an exciting year!
By Nigel Freeney on January 1st, 2008
Prior to considering whether to start a blog or not I became aware of a couple of blogs written under pseudonyms. One was "NHS Blog Doctor" by Dr Crippen and the other was "Girl with a one track mind" by the girl. Both in their own way are contentious, thought provoking and very well written. The main difference aside from subject matter is that Dr Crippen remains anonymous…… for the moment!
On the strength of this I decided that for this blog that I would write it as myself. This makes the blogging rules somewhat more straightforward.
- Don’t write anything about anyone that you are not prepared to say to them directly
- Expect that not everyone will agree with your point of view
- Write regularly but if you’ve got nothing to say be silent
- Have opinions but don’t claim to be an expert on things you are not
- Don’t take yourself to seriously
Happy New Year 2008!
By Nigel Freeney on December 31st, 2007
I’ve just been exploring Google Analytics – a tool for creating useful and usable statistics for your website and what your visitors do if and when they get to it.
To be honest I’m not blown away by what it does because I have a tool that I bought 6 years ago which does the same thing using my downloaded server logs. It was even updated after I thought all updating had ceased so now includes the latest operating systems and browsers in the reports – 123loganalyzer.
Anyway after taking a look I navigated back to my Google account page and it was in Russian (of course not being fluent in Russian it could have been another cyrrillic language but I am taking a wild guess).
First thoughts were that perhaps Russia has decided to knock out our communications network by taking over Google and then I wondered whether I had inadvertently reset the default language. I logged out and logged back in and the language was set back to English.
So OK I might sound a little paranoid by cyberterrorism is set to be the new black in 2008.
Помните, что Вы услышали это здесь первый товарищ
(Remember you heard it here first comrade!)
By Nigel Freeney on December 30th, 2007
The last month has been a busy month.
Whilst everyone was out spending the money that they didn’t have in anticipation of having even less in 2008 I have been beavering away.
The main event was the re-launch of the Just for Nurses website http://www.justfornurses.co.uk/.
The main new features include:
- Nursing Jobs Board
- Nursing Forums
- Book Reviews
- “After I Qualified…” informal careers information
- Discounted Online Nursing courses
- plus the chance to win one of 2 4GB Ipod Nanos or a free online training course
This appears to have gone pretty well and the visitor statistics are looking pretty healthy at this point.
There are lots of design and content issues to consider not least of which this is one of nine nursing websites that I manage – but more about that later.
Blogging is clearly a useful medium for spreading the word about what you do and if anyone chooses to find what I write interesting so much the better – but I can’t promise
