What nurses are talking about: content and community within a nursing online forum.

There is little research on the use of online forums by nursing professionals as a way of creating community and exchanging professional knowledge. The purpose of this study is to analyze the content of an online nursing forum to determine the potential of online forums to constitute a community of practice among nurses. We examined one month of thread topics from a nursing focused general discussion forum and categorized (294 discussion threads) according to content. The most frequent topics of discussion were advice regarding career planning and clinical/technical questions. The majority of posts dealt directly with the domain of nursing. The finding that nurses are seeking information about clinical tasks from unverified anonymous online sources raises concerns about the safety culture of health care institutions.