A Nursing student writes...

A Nursing student writes...

I recently received an email from a charming nursing student who read my blog, and wanted to know a little more about a presentation I'd uploaded to slideshare - on NICE and healthcare rationing. Primarily she wanted to reference it in an essay for her nursing degree on a similar topic. Now, of course I was very flattered, and yes, I do think my opinions are sensible and backed up by evidence, but I'm clearly not an expert on the ethics, law or economics of healthcare rationing. So I advised her to go to my references and look at the primary sources.

Because I'm a doctor I'm contractually obliged to unthinkingly underestimate nurses, and in fact she'd already done that. But she still thought it was appropriate to reference my presentation since she felt it had influenced her thinking:

"In some ways it's a grey area as I could solely reference primary sources and the Tutor would be unlikely to question it. But I am definitely borrowing the odd point from your presentation, so best to do the right thing"

TBH I don't think I would have been quite so honourable. I read a lot in articles, blogs, twitter feeds, on the TV, and from friends and colleagues. Sometimes I hear ideas or opinions I like or that persuade me to change my thinking. Some of it is conscious, much unconscious. So, when it comes to writing scholarly work, I tend to reference the primary sources that are at least published if not peer-reviewed too. Even if a blog article or online presentation influenced my thinking, I think I wouldn't reference it unless I was quoting it.

Is this reasonable, or am I being a snob about referencing sources that I don't think of as traditionally 'authoritative'? Would I feel better about referencing an article or book chapter by someone rather than the same person's blog? I think I probably would. And what about sites like wikipedia, which has the advantage of being 'peer reviewed' in some sense?

The debate about referencing wikipedia in scholarly work still has some distance to run, I think. For now, the rule seems to be that you can use wikipedia to learn but shouldn't rely on it as authoritative - and therefore shouldn't reference it directly. I think there's a lot to be said for wikipedia generally, especially if you understand how it works and how to look at the evolution of the article and its related discussions. But no matter how good wikipedia / my slideshare presentations / my blog waffling is, if I'm still sceptical about sticking them in the reference section of my essays, I think it'll be some time before these kinds of resources are widely accepted as reasonable reference points for academic work.

Perhaps this is a shame, but perhaps a conservative attitude to this new medium is wise until theres a widespread and deeper appreciation of how it works, how it can be used and what it adds.

Finally, my web-savvy nursing-student reader signed off with another interesting point. Having reviewed many of the primary sources I'd mentioned in my talk, she did pause for thought at the end of the assignment, reflecting...

"Oh well, I still can't give a patient a urinary catheter, but I read Aristotle today..."

What hath I wrought?