Alison Twycross (@alitwy), Editor and Joanna Smith (@josmith175) and Roberta Heale (@robertaheale), Associate Editors, EBN
Being the editor and associate editors of Evidence base nursing places us not only in a privileged position to contribute directly to the quality of journal content and future directions of the journal, but ultimately to support nurses in practice to base care on the best available evidence. Over the past two years we have been developing our social media strategy as a means to disseminate, share and debate best evidence based practice to people who do not necessarily subscribe to our journal, enabling EBN to reach a wider range of people, some of which may not have been previously aware of EBN’s activities.
We are excited to be representing EBN at INANE, networking with peers, and the opportunity to present the successes and challenges of embedding social media as a core EBN activity. Successes have included:
- Encouraging nurses to lobby key decision-makers on current nursing issues through blogging and Twitter chts. For example, we led a campaign on the implications of the Shape of Caring Review for children’s nursing http://ebn.bmj.com/content/18/4/105.full
- A thought provoking guest editorial reflecting concerns about legalising assisted dying and an accompanying podcast in the run up to a Bill being heard in Parliament http://ebn.bmj.com/content/18/4/97.full.pdf+html?sid=56bc4061-5aa8-45c2-ab10-74e916335bc5
- Podcasts can be accessed through this link https://soundcloud.com/bmjpodcasts/sets/ebn-podcast:
- Editor’s choice articles and editorials can be found at http://ebn.bmj.com/collections/editors_choice.
Challenges have included:
- Identifying the best time for Twitter Chats;
- Ensuring co-hosts have the skills to contribute to online chats;
- Developing effective ways of advertising and committing time to tweet in advance of Twitter Chats.
We will report the key messages we gained from attending INANE next week.