Curiously Awesome

Scrubs is a website designed to support nurses and health care workers. If this is you, then you owe it to yourself to take a moment and check out this site. It is a refreshingly original and fun site that would be appropriate and useful to nurses at any stage in their career…from student to management.

I had a lot of fun browsing around the site. They have a favorite nurse poll that of course, I couldn’t resist voting in (Carol Hathaway! Yeah!) Her character was always a favorite of mine and seeing her resurrect her old character again a few weeks ago was a rare and appreciated treat for me.

I also enjoyed the Tip Jar where they take a sticky situation and give some suggestions for dealing with it. The current one is about how to deal with an incompetent boss. Again, I couldn’t resist and I added my two cents in the comment section. As I said in my comment, as long as you just concentrate on doing your job as well as you can, any other negative situations will always eventually be corrected.

This is a invaluable site for nurses and I would heartily encourage any readers who are nurses to check it out!

Preparedness is good. But ill-informed preparedness is a waste of time and money. There’s a lot of ill-informed preparedness happening right now.

Let’s talk about all those people buying N95 masks. They think wearing a mask protects them from swine flu. The mainstream media is perpetuating this misinformation.

Did you ever notice that health care workers wear surgical masks that are very similar to the N95 face masks? Have you considered why they are wearing those masks? Are they wearing masks to protect themselves from the patient’s germs? No…they wear those masks to prevent their own germs from harming the patient.

N95 masks have one purpose. To prevent the wearer from infecting others. They work by preventing virus-carrying particles from becoming airborne. If the wearer sneezes or coughs their fluids will be trapped in the mask and will not infect others. These masks have no ability to protect the wearer from other people’s airborne germs.

When you inhale while wearing this mask, the air you’re inhaling enters through gaps on the sides of the mask. Some masks protect you from airborne bacteria and viruses and others protect you from chemical fumes. You need to know what you’re buying and what it’s rated for.

If N95 masks were effective for protecting people from airborne biohazards, then the US Army would use these low-cost N95 masks for their soldiers instead of the more expensive full-face gas masks they use. The reason full-face gas masks are used by soldiers is because they work to protect from airborne contaminants. If your goal is to stay alive, you don’t want a N95 mask.

Ready to talk about all things Manta?

SeaWorld’s Manta, is opening this May! To celebrate, SeaWorld is running an contest where you could win a pass to see Manta at SeaWorld in Orlando.

Visit SeaWorld’s site now and have some fun participating in the six activities they have up right now. For example, take the Manta quiz and test your Manta trivia knowledge. This could be a really fun way to get yourself closer to winning some great prizes. Or, take a picture of yourself displaying “I heart Manta” and upload it to Flickr. Fill a row up with friends and get yourself even closer to cool prizes. This sounds fun…make a short video of yourself talking about how excited you are to ride Manta. Upload it to YouTube and tell SeaWorld about it to get credit toward earning Manta prizes. My kids would love this one…download the Manta Mask from the SeaWorld website, print it out and cut it out…put it on, take a picture, and upload it to Flickr. That’s it! Doesn’t that sound fun? Last but not least, tweet Shamu and tell him how excited you are to visit SeaWorld!

If you complete two of the Manta site activities, you earn one photograph from your Manta ride experience at SeaWorld. If you complete all six of the activities, you’ll go straight to the front of the line when you earn the “Front-of-the-line” pass* at SeaWorld. What a fun way to earn even more fun!