Vet nurses and social media survey

RE: Vet nurses and social media survey

Arlo Guthrie — Wed, 02 Oct 2019 08:30:49 GMT

A little bit of an update ...

I've pulled the name out of the hat for the case of champagne for taking part in the draw, and it goes to Vanessa Busby RVN from Tremain Veterinary Group.

I want to thank everyone for taking part ... really, really helpful and has given me a good sense of direction. I'll leave the survey open in case of any latecomers (https://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/5196601/Veterinary-Nurses-And-Social-Media-Survey), but the champagne has gone!

The main findings are that:

VetNurse and Facebook are the two main players. A few other forums mentioned, but not in significant numbers. So this is, as I thought, largely about competition between VN and Facebook.
I say 'competition' but actually, VN and Facebook are very different, and I think they should be complementary to each other. What this survey has done is shown me the things that you think are the biggest problems with Facebook, which I can then offer a solution to over here.
My general direction of travel, though, is to introduce technological developments that make this site a centre of excellence for clinical information-sharing (where Facebook is more suited to general chit chat). Clinical information-sharing is something I am very confident we can do SO much better than Facebook (apart from anything else, Facebook isn't built for that). Whether being better than Facebook will be enough, only time will tell, but I am confident!
You've given me an order of priorities for the site development. I'm not going to say now what that is (commercially sensitive), but when I think it is safe to do so, I'll explain what I'm doing and why!

In the background, the site upgrade has been hugely delayed by events outside my control, but my developers advise that functionally, the new site will be ready for me to start testing this week, maybe even today, but there is still some work on the graphics to be done. Still, not far away now.

Exciting (for me, anyway!)

RE: Vet nurses and social media survey

Arlo Guthrie — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 09:42:18 GMT

[quote user="Ben Ogden"]However, I'm not a huge advocate of displaying every qualification under the sun as a cop out for providing actual reference material. [/quote]

Ben Ogden - I'd agree with that!

Funnily enough, I've been thinking about doing EXACTLY what you suggest in point 2. It may or may not be added in time for the next upgrade, but it is certainly on the agenda.

[quote user="Ben Ogden"]I'm not against people displaying their qualifications, after all you've worked your tail off (hopefully) to get it, but don;t use it to hide behind [/quote]

I think it is important to stress that displaying qualifications in some way, shape or form is really just to give a steer to the reader that the opinion or advice they are reading is coming from someone with x level of experience. I think that is important, because on FB you really don't know anything at all about the person posting.

Sure, absolutely 100% agree with you that referencing is even more important. But sometimes (more in the veterinary profession than in human healthcare), there isn't any decent evidence to reference, and anecdote is all there is. In that case, better to know the provenance of the anecdote.

In other words, it's just part of how one can assess information in a post:

Is it referenced, and what is the quality of the reference?
Who wrote it, and what is their experience/qualification (which is not just about qualifications).

RE: Vet nurses and social media survey

Sal the 1st — Fri, 13 Sep 2019 19:26:40 GMT

[quote user="Ben Ogden"]

I'm not against people displaying their qualifications, after all you've worked your tail off (hopefully) to get it, but don;t use it to hide behind

[/quote]

exactly that - couldn't agree more

RE: Vet nurses and social media survey

Ben Ogden — Fri, 13 Sep 2019 15:34:16 GMT

Two minds on this, I don't like the Facebook medium for all the noise and people talking complete unfounded Chicken Tenders! Probably calling out such nonsense is the reason why I'm banned from most of these "professional" groups. However, I'm not a huge advocate of displaying every qualification under the sun as a cop out for providing actual reference material.

I've seen a lot of sense from very qualified people and sometimes a lot of what planet did you step off!

Arlo Guthrie Is there a possibility of adding one of these two things (and tell me to take a jump if i'm just full of my own shine)

1) Add to the buttons across the top (agree, disagree, thank you etc) a "request more info", "request for evidence" or something to that effect

2) When writing a post, just below the main box, just above the "email me replies to this post" tick box a dialogue box specifically for inputting reference or further reading material. It may be a good prompt for people to back up what they say.

I'm not against people displaying their qualifications, after all you've worked your tail off (hopefully) to get it, but don;t use it to hide behind

RE: Vet nurses and social media survey

Arlo Guthrie — Fri, 13 Sep 2019 07:26:48 GMT

[quote user="Sal the 1st"]So the option for me to stay as 'Sal the 1st' and not display a badge would still be there?[/quote]

Yes! I don't plan to make it mandatory, but if I did, I would always allow for exemptions!

RE: Vet nurses and social media survey

Sal the 1st — Thu, 12 Sep 2019 19:51:58 GMT

[quote user="Arlo Guthrie"]

What do you think?

[/quote]

So the option for me to stay as 'Sal the 1st' and not display a badge would still be there? - if so thats me happy I would rather stay as I am please with some degree of anonymity. I have had my quals (a number of which are outside vet nursing but very pertinent to vet practice currently) and details up in the past - it brought me nothing but grief I'm not doing it again.

RE: Vet nurses and social media survey

Arlo Guthrie — Thu, 12 Sep 2019 15:54:54 GMT

[quote user="Raffles"]You qualified in 1990? Wow, didn't know veterinary nurses were invented then [/quote]

Oops - nope ... had my account set to 'RVN' for testing purposes and forgot to reset. Have set it back to what it should be.

RE: Vet nurses and social media survey

Raffles — Thu, 12 Sep 2019 15:39:58 GMT

[quote user="Arlo Guthrie"]So, we'd keep the existing RVN badge, and just add 'College of Animal Welfare, 1990' (or 'CAW 1990') underneath.[/quote]

You qualified in 1990? Wow, didn't know veterinary nurses were invented then

RE: Vet nurses and social media survey

Alison Clare Hickman — Thu, 12 Sep 2019 10:09:49 GMT

Arlo Guthrie - hehehehe - publishing my year of qualification (I was not just a late starter I was an ancient beginner) might make me sound far younger than I am... woop woop woop!

RE: Vet nurses and social media survey

Arlo Guthrie — Thu, 12 Sep 2019 09:04:42 GMT

[quote user="Sal the 1st"] it has just been a very bad week.[/quote]

Bad luck old fruit ... hope it improves soon.

I do agree with you it is very important people don't feel unimportant, or that they can't post, simply because of their level of qualification.

The flip side of that is that I think VetNurse needs to offer things that Facebook cannot.

Facebook is good for general banter. But for clinical discussions, I think it is a significant problem on Facebook that you cannot know anything about the person writing unless they are your 'friend'.

I think (and it is borne out by my survey), that it is really important to have some idea of the experience of the person contributing in order to put their clinical advice/suggestion etc into context.

One idea from a VetSurgeon member which I really liked, and which could perhaps work over here, is simply to show the 'qualified at / year' adjacent to forum posts by RVNs.

So, we'd keep the existing RVN badge, and just add 'College of Animal Welfare, 1990' (or 'CAW 1990') underneath.

That has the additional advantage of connecting people who were at the same place at the same time!

What do you think?

RE: Vet nurses and social media survey

Alison Clare Hickman — Thu, 12 Sep 2019 07:53:24 GMT

Aw Sal. Hugs m'darlin. You're a wonderful lass. Hang tight. Xx

RE: Vet nurses and social media survey

Sal the 1st — Thu, 12 Sep 2019 03:19:51 GMT

sorry if I misunderstood - but having just spent most of the day trying to convince a very upset nursing assistant that they DO have an important job in the practice and they aren't just there to clean up after everybody else or be talked down to, having listened to vets grumbling about vets (for pity's sake just talk to each other folks instead of talking about each other to somebody else),being told that as the nurse its my job (but there is only one of me -so does that mean I get to do everything?, I mean how many parts can one person split themselves into?) listened to a very upset client, doing what I could for them knowing that whatever I do they aren't going to feel any better about things and just generally trying to keep the peace, and the boss is on holiday.

And here I am at 3.18am - another sleepless night wondering if when I get in there in a few hours time I can expect another day of the same. I seem to have spent the whole time stroking egos and 90% of that has been down to qualifications and status, so when I read your post it just put the tin hat on it. It isn't always like this - it has just been a very bad week.

RE: Vet nurses and social media survey

Arlo Guthrie — Wed, 11 Sep 2019 22:37:17 GMT

[quote user="Sal the 1st"] sorry but that is me out then.[/quote]

that’s a bit strong! I mean we already display RVN status, and people can already display additional qualifications, and it doesn’t stop anyone from being able to chip in. I’m just talking about greater transparency than is possible on facebook which allows everyone to put people’s answers into context.

RE: Vet nurses and social media survey

Sal the 1st — Wed, 11 Sep 2019 22:02:50 GMT

[quote user="Arlo Guthrie"]

I feel strongly that we must beef up the display of the professional credentials of our members in two ways ... firstly to encourage you all to add more detail to your profiles, and secondly to display qualifications adjacent to forum posts. I'm aiming to have this done for the deployment of the next version of the site ...

[/quote]

sorry but that is me out then. One of the best things with this site is that everybody - qualifications or not can chip in and not feel that because they don't hold a qualification what they have to say is unimportant. This is one of the reasons I don't display qualifications

RE: Vet nurses and social media survey

Arlo Guthrie — Wed, 11 Sep 2019 09:25:41 GMT

Very interesting results in from the survey so far, and they've reignited my sense of purpose.

I was particularly interested in what vets and vet nurses thought was the biggest weakness in Facebook, and the most commonly ticked option amongst both vets and nurses was:

You cannot see the professional qualifications of those contributing to a discussion, so, unless you know them offline, you don't know if they know what they are talking about.

Quality answers being drowned out by 'me too' and the difficulty of finding useful info posted by people were in second and third place respectively.

What I plan to do now is use the results to brief our developers as to what needs to be done first. After we've decided, I'll then post our proposals with the supporting research so you can comment.

Using this as an example (though I haven't yet discussed with developers), I feel strongly that we must beef up the display of the professional credentials of our members in two ways ... firstly to encourage you all to add more detail to your profiles, and secondly to display qualifications adjacent to forum posts. I'm aiming to have this done for the deployment of the next version of the site ...

Still time to do the survey (and you go into a draw for a case of champagne): https://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/5196601/Veterinary-Nurses-And-Social-Media-Survey

RE: Vet nurses and social media survey

Arlo Guthrie — Thu, 05 Sep 2019 08:09:53 GMT

[quote user="Alison Clare Hickman"]They should consider themselves privileged to be near you[/quote]

Hahaha, indeed, I'm sure Joanna Lumley, Geri Halliwell, Kate Moss, Judi Dench and even George Michael, if he were alive today, would be very privileged to know they are now being displayed alongside the editor of VetNurse.co.uk

RE: Vet nurses and social media survey

Alison Clare Hickman — Wed, 04 Sep 2019 21:52:04 GMT

Arlo Guthrie

Think u mean 2 across 3 down... This was your best WTH is he on about moment yet...

And for 2A3D... #theintellectualpose

Edit. I'm confusing myself... Is it 3D 2A or 3D 1A or 2A 3D or 2A 2D .... aaaaaaaaaah!! But you are right, illustrious company. They should consider themselves privileged to be near you

RE: Vet nurses and social media survey

Arlo Guthrie — Wed, 04 Sep 2019 19:21:56 GMT

ta muchly .... just realised I had left couple of references to vetsurgeon on there (i created the survey for both sites and shared on VS first). Anyway, corrected now ...

RE: Vet nurses and social media survey

Sal the 1st — Wed, 04 Sep 2019 19:14:20 GMT

done

RE: Vet nurses and social media survey

Arlo Guthrie — Wed, 04 Sep 2019 19:07:23 GMT

[quote user="Alison Clare Hickman"]Like the new photo! #cheesygrin [/quote]

Ha ... cheesy grin?!

How about this one, then: https://www.carolinetrue.com/Portraits/

(3 across, two down).

If nothing else, I'm in illustrious company there (note the visual name drop)!

Thank you for doing the survey ;)

RE: Vet nurses and social media survey

Alison Clare Hickman — Wed, 04 Sep 2019 18:29:39 GMT

Done. Like the new photo! #cheesygrin