Cool stuff for Nurses in Finland

Are you a nurse/nursing student in Finland?

Are you a member of the Sairaanhoitajaliitto (nurse’s association)? If so, do you get the the Sairaanhoitajaliitto Magazine every month?

If you answered yes to all of the above questions, and have not yet noticed the great benefits that you have been missing out on, take a second to read about this:

On the back of the magazine, you will find your name, above which is a number. This is your ID number for the association. When you go to the website (click on the banner above or on the link on left sidebar) you can use this number to access the ‘Jäsennetti’ (memeber’s intranet). Through this you can access the Ovid Essential Nursing Collection (through which you can access the full texts of 40 different nursing journals). Another great thing is the Duodecimin terveysportti-palvelut, through which you can access the following services:

• Pharmaca Fennica (the finnish national Formulary for drugs)
• Lääkeopas (The Pharmaca Fennica’s drug directory and articles on drugs etc)
• Hoidon perusteet (fundamentals of nursing)
• Diabetes-tietokanta (here you find everything you could possibly need to know about diabetes and care thereof)
• Lastenneuvolaopas (Nursing of babies and children Directory)
• Potilasohjeet (all the official instructions for patient education)
• Terveystieteiden Sanakirja (The medical terms dictionary, several different languages-very very useful!)
• SPR:n Veripalvelut oppaat (the finnish red cross’s blood services directory)
• Toimenpideluokitukset (Interventions classifications)
• ICD-10 (The WHO International Classification of Diseases)

There is plenty of other stuff to explore there, so if you’d like to find out more, check out the intranet for yourself from the comfort of your home. Normally these services are only available through hospital intranets, schools/universities and libraries. If you have not started your ‘X-files’ collection, which is the little book where you write down all interesting info on diseases and meds, then these services are great way to access all kinds of information. I Myself did not actually notice this great service until my class mate Gema kindly pointed it out. I’m totally into this now. The first thing I did was type ‘dissociation disorders’ in ovid and I found a really interesting article which I am going to use for my next essay (‘Access and manage somatization’;(2003) Maynard, Carolyn K. The Nurse Practitioner).

This is totally a prayer answer to our ‘Googling prohibited’ Dilemma (We are forbidden from using any information in our essays as references obtained through Google).

That’s all for now. Furthermore, I wish you all a happy spring!

Health Tip: Always read the instructions and label (that long piece of paper that is folded up and crammed into the box) of medication, before using. I hope that everyone to takes this advice seriously. Medications are not sweets, and they should always be kept out of reach of children. Even if they’re just Strepsils.