Important (free) Tools to Help Stay up on Advances in Your Specialty

The most important (free) tool is to subscribe to electronic Table of Contents (TOC) Alerts.
     Go to your favorite journal web sites. Find the link to eTOC or to subscribe to the journal.  The Table of
     Contents will come to you email whenever there is a new issue.  There is no limit to these subscriptions.
     Consider subscribing to journals outside of your specialty to extend your nursing knowledge.

Cochrane Collaborative
      The Cochrane Collaborative is open to professionals and public.  You will find reviews of research that
       have been completed by research experts around the world. Start here when you are looking for an
       answer to a clinical topic.  You may want to read the section for "patients" which is very easy to understand.
       Get help from your agency librarian to obtain the reviews of research.

PubMed
      Online database of medical research articles. You can find research articles on any topic. Full text articles
       are not always available, but get help from your agency librarian to obtain the full text articles.

Medscape for Nurses
      Medscape aggregates or gathers together important research and sends to your email.

Zotero
      Zotero is an add-in to Firefox browser--helps you organize your research, articles, web pages, etc.

Evernote
Can't keep track of you list of things to do? Need multiple lists of things to do for different people? Evernote is a free application you can install on your smart phone, desktop and laptop computer. You can create separate notes for yourself, for others and then synchronize them between multiple users. You never have to remember anything again!

iTunes University
If you have an interest in ANYTHING, there are sound and video files you can download for free from iTunes. You will be so impressed when you see how generously experts from around the world share their knowledge. It is all free and you can download iTunes on a Mac or PC/Windows computer. Want to learn to speak another language? Get the newest research in diabetes? Learn to paint? You name it--you will get help there.

YouTube
Like iTunes University, you will find videos on every topic you can imagine on YouTube. You can subscribe to specific channels (mine is NurseStoner). Have your own channel and add to the nursing knowledge of others by creating videos that help others. You can also find a video I created on how to get published there.

DropBox
Online documents storage makes it easy to access files from anywhere. You can also share folders with others by having your documents online.  If you a working on a project with others, you'll find Dropbox to be an invaluable resource.

Ustream.tv
One of the most useful tools that I use for conferencing.  You can connect with anyone and give a broadcast, or search for the broadcasts or just about anyone.  You can watch puppies or important meetings on Ustream.