Let's stop eating our young!

People are amazed when I tell them that -- despite nursing's aura of high tech -- for on-the-job data tracking, nurses rely on a mere piece of paper.

They call this piece of paper their "brain". Each nurse invents her own format (see examples in our brain museum).

Sharing of best practices is rare. Time and information management techniques are not taught nor even mentioned in nursing schools.

Some bitter commentators have described the culture of nursing as one in which nurses "eat their young".  That is, we do not support novices by, for example, sharing our brains. 

Nursing has also been called a "suck-it-up" culture ("pay your dues like I paid mine") not unlike that of the military.

Whether or not there is truth in these allegations, it is clear that the culture is regressive. Nursing is more like a guild than a profession. When shared, survival skills such as the use of the brain are handed down from one nurse to the next as an oral tradition rather than as part of a formal body of knowledge and methods.

The state of the art of nursing time management and the way it will be improved are discussed on our New Brains web page. From our point of view, this creates a huge opportunity! The potential for positive change in nursing workflow by applying software technology is radical, and NurseMind intends to be at the center of it.