Nursing communities

Important notice: Please note that all RCN Forums will be given an online presence in the community model. The pilot period is now coming to an end and we will be evaluating the model throughout May 2008. We now have a functional login bridge for our community editors that is currently being fully tested in readiness for an imminent release. If you have any questions please email webteam@rcn.org.uk

Your nursing communities have been designed to empower you to share information and good practice using bespoke communications tools. Each community will facilitate simple and easy interaction between members who are interested in a particular subject, maintain an informational resource about the subject and allow better communication with the RCN.

Communities are essentially social networking websites transferred to a professional environment. Your RCN nursing community might be:

  • a group of RCN members with a common nursing speciality
  • RCN members with a geographical grouping
  • a member group united by a common issue or campaign.

These three ‘streams’ will be used as the primary navigational structure of our communities section.

Most crucially, the community editors are taken on a voluntary basis from our membership. Editors are able to update the live website with content and information that they receive from their community. The RCN webteam will support you in this endeavour, both editorially and technically; therefore ensuring that content is member-defined and more relevant to community members.

The RCN aims to encourage many of these communities to develop and flourish over time in order to reflect the professional standing of the RCN.

The community pilot scheme

In order for the RCN to ensure that the community model works properly we need to go through a phase of testing the community pilots. The pilot communities have primarily been offered to existing RCN Forum groups and we have now had enough interest to launch the pilot scheme.

Communities will only be open to current RCN members but as a member there is no limit to the number of communities that you can join, for free. Access to the pilot communities is only limited by RCN membership; we are not asking you to join any specific communities at this stage.

In order to help you find the community you are interested in we propose that communities are split up according to the following three ‘streams’:

  • nursing specialisms and areas of practice
  • geographical nursing communities
  • nursing issues or campaigns.

Any of the RCN’s communities will be found in one or more of these streams, within which communities will are listed A-Z.

We also propose a community ‘pool’ where you can discuss with other members your ideas for the formation of new communities. The general criteria that need to be satisfied in order for a new community to be formed can be found in the about nursing communities section.

The RCN aims to encourage many of these communities to develop and flourish over time in order to reflect the professional standing of the RCN. However, in order to do both those things, a number of processes and safeguards have to be implemented. Please see our Acceptable Use Policy for communities for further information.