Virtual Community

I joined allnurses.com, a free Internet community for those who enjoy the subject of nursing careers. The community accepts those who are nurses including retired or presently working, as well as nursing students and pre-nursing student. Actually, anybody could join. I thought this would be a great virtual community to join because conversing with others around the globe could help me get a better idea of how nursing is being preformed all around. I have heard of online nurses communities, but never had I heard of allnurses.com.

To get familiar with the Internet community, I watched the video tutorial, which gave me a better idea of the services offered and how to go about looking and responding to forums. Something that really stood out to me was the diversity in nursing culture that is expressed throughout the forums. Sure, many are from the United States, but there are people from Singapore, UK, South Africa, and the list goes on. One of the forums is especially for nursing students, where a variety of topics such as “school uniforms” and “grading system” are discussed.

I believe I am accepted into this online community because I am a nursing student and can easily relate to many of the subject topics in both the student forum and regular nursing forum. At first, I wasn’t really sure how others felt about my presents. I hadn’t personally received any messages in response to my forum posts I had posted in the first two days of use. So, I decided to create my own thread (start a different subject). I posted a few questions on my thread including asking opinions on using human patient simulators in nursing school and if other schools use them. It seemed like almost immediately I had a response! From the attitude of this community, I think acceptance is a norm. It seems that people are very willing to answer questions and give opinions to create a comfortable environment. One persons post regarded the student nurse forum as a “safe zone” when giving another student her opinion on her schools overall performance. I think the only way someone could be driven out of the forums is if they made posting irrelevant to nursing subjects.

Reading the forum sometimes felt like I was in a room with hundreds of people all sharing different opinions! When people had an opinion that was different than another, I would often see the person respond with the previous message in quotations and the person would firmly state their opposing position. For the most part, everyone shares their opinions pleasantly and many people have the same opinions.

Many agreements and disagreements are also expressed by using emoticons. In fact, emoticons seem to be very popular and the selection is huge. I also noticed how encouraging people are on the forums. One person had a post concerning how difficult it would be to finish nursing school because she was just diagnosed with bilateral breast cancer. She has pages of responses with words of encouragement and praise for being so determined.

With some forum topics, I felt like expressing my true opinion, although I felt that I would come off rude or misinterpreted. I think this is because these discussions are being taken place in cyberspace, not face-to-face. Sometimes I feel that it can be hard to express opinions without having the message turn into a misconception. Maybe others feel the same way I do and are just not expressing as much as they would like to. I think this is the one disadvantage virtual communities have. The disadvantages that some forum posts came come off misinterpreted and this may hold back what people truly want to say.

Overall, I’m really glad I joined this Internet community. I really feel that joining this community has already expanded my knowledge and washed away some assumptions or stereotypes I had regarding other nursing schools and nursing careers.