Nursing/Medical Websites

There are a lot of sites about nursing and/or medicine. Many of them would be very poor choices to use for either a class or personal need. While the few listed below are some of the best, the are not the only good ones – however, finding medical information on the internet requires a higher lever of evaluation then, say, English literature. Thinking that Hamlet is the main character of “A Rose for Emily” makes you look silly; allowing someone ‘just one cookie’ based on “this website I saw” could make you responsible for making them much more sick, if not worse.

Be especially cautious about sites hosted by pharmaceutical companies. Some are well-designed, regularly updated, and cite facts from reliable sources. Others are not and do not.

And not all bad sites are as obvious as, say, “aliens cure cancer” (or the more popular, “aliens cause cancer”, to judge by basic Google searches). Yes, it does take time, effort, and practice to separate the good from the bad. But isn’t your health, and the health of your future patients, worth it?

These sites are divided into two sections, based on the two big projects in NURS 1001 (the career paper) and NURS 2501 (the disease paper) at LSUE.

CAREER

Occupational Outlook Handbook
http://www.bls.gov/oco/
The best place to find information about careers in the United States. Each career entry has sections about the nature of the work, average salaries, training and qualifications, and estimated job growth (or lack). Updated yearly.

Office of Science Education - LifeWorks
http://science-education.nih.gov/LifeWorks.nsf/feature/index.htm
Information on health and medical science careers, created and run by the National Institutes for Health. There is some overlap between this and the OOH, but not much.

MEDICINE

MedlinePlus: Health Information from the National Library of Medicine
http://medlineplus.gov/
Worth listing twice. The absolute best place to start for health and medical information, run by the National Library of Medicine. All outside links (for example, to the American Cancer Association) are clearly labeled.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
http://www.cdc.gov/
Information on most diseases, with focus on public health/prevention. Entries have sections on basic information, statistics, and a glossary. The A-Z index works better than the search box. One of the better government sites for clearly dated pages.

BONUS

Study Tips: Tips From Former Nursing Students
http://www.medi-smart.com/study-tips.htm
List of tips and suggestions from and for nursing students. Worth looking at despite the date (2004), but the rest of the site is not recommended.