Academic terms are starting up again all over the world, and many students (and their professors) are looking for inspiration to embark on new learning activities! Nursology.net has established a history of encouraging students, or guests from any nursing career stage or setting, to contribute to the blog. Those of us who manage the site, as well as Nursology.net visitors, are delighted when this happens! We have a category – student perspectives – that you can access from the list of categories toward the bottom of the Nursology.net right sidebar to see what students have contributed to the blog so far.

As this academic term gets underway, I am inspired to offer some ideas for students and anyone else for blog posts that highlight your own creativity and ideas, and hopefully provide an experience that contributes to your own development as a writer and scholar. Blog posts differ from journal articles in just this way – you can test out your own ideas, and dive into a little corner of curiosity in ways that are not possible in any other format! Take a moment to read my 2019 blog post “You Can Do It!” for more detail – and possibly inspiration!

Blog posts can emerge from other writing projects, such as papers for a class, or a proposal for a policy or initiative where you work. But they are different from these kinds of writing projects because the audience is different! When you write a blog post for Nursology.net, your audience is anyone who visits the site! We know that many of our visitors are students, and probably most are nurses or soon-to-be nurses. But there are also people from other walks of life as well. So while blog posts on Nursology.net are clearly written for a nursing audience, your post needs to “make sense” to almost anyone who reads it! Your post is probably going to be shorter than a class paper would be – and concise and with a clear message for a broad audience.

Here are some ideas to use as “jumping off” points for a nursology.net blog!

• Report of an interview with a nurse theorist, along with a brief commentary as to how and why this theorist is of interest to you.  Or, an “in memoriam” post about a scholar who is no longer living.  Or, a “guardian of the discipline” post about a nurse leader who is a strong advocate for nursing and nursing theory!
• A critical review of an article that you identify as key to your own theoretical development.  There are a number of posts in the “notable works” category that give examples of this type of post – https://nursology.net/category/notable-works/
• Discussion of a theoretical framework that you are developing for a thesis or dissertation, or for a project you are undertaking to guide your nursing practice. Your framework needs to include one or more existing nursing theory. It can also include theories from other disciplines, or concepts from your particular interests and challenges. This is often how new theories start to emerge!
• Critical discussion of contemporary issues that are relevant for the development of nursing knowledge – for example, barriers to nurses of color as scholars and authors of nursing theories, movements or trends that impede nursing knowledge development (such a banning of books), and how nursing knowledge informs our response to these movements as nurses.
• For those who come from other countries, or have spent time in other countries, or in underserved areas in the U.S. – discussion of the relevance of nursing knowledge in those contexts (given that so much of nursing knowledge is developed in the urban U.S.).  There are a few theories in the Nursology.net “Theories & Models Gallery” from other countries, or cultures – a blog post could focus on describing the importance of those theories.  
• Commentary inspired by any one or more of the “categories” for blog posts on Nursology.net. The categories are listed in the right sidebar; when you click on a category you will see all the previous blogs related to that category! Follow up with a blog post of your own related to this category!

It is important to also know key differences between blog posts and journal articles – here are some ideas to keep in mind:

So go for it!! Save this post as a potential “to-do” list item for the coming academic year! Use the “blog submission form” to submit your work, and we will be in touch to work with you in getting your idea posted on the blog!