iNURSE By Emily B.

Kean, MSLS

Creating an Online Journal Club Using

WordPress.com
One hospital’s experience with this easy-to-use, free blogging
platform.

F
ace-to-face journal clubs are prevalent at the had the capability of adding a blogging module to
Christ Hospital, a 555-bed, not-for-profit the existing intranet interface; this had been previ-
acute care facility in Cincinnati, Ohio. Nurse ously requested by an existing face-to-face journal
involvement in these clubs is actively encouraged by club but had been rejected because of cost. We also
the hospital’s research and evidence-based practice explored an enterprise-level subscription to a wiki
council. Active participation in a journal club— space (a Web site that allows users to add, modify,
either as a member or as a club leader—also con- or delete content via any Web browser) from a third-
tributes toward the research and evidence-based party vendor; this option was ruled out owing to the
practice criteria of the hospital’s RN professional cost of supporting the number of private members
advancement program. The research and evidence- for each online club. We then created trial sites using
based practice council decided to explore online more cost-efficient options, such as Google Groups
journal clubs as a means of including more nurses Discussion Forums and the free blogging platform
on all shifts and reducing time away from patient WordPress.com.
care spent attending journal club meetings. This arti-
cle is an account of a fully implemented online jour-
nal club and describes the step-by-step process by
For the most part, WordPress
which it was established.
Establishing criteria. Before setting up Web sites is a turnkey system, meaning
for the online journal clubs, the nurse educators at
the hospital outlined several criteria as requirements that there are very few steps to
for the sites:
• They should be accessible from both on- and implementing or customizing
off-site computers.
• They should not be made public so that anyone
on the Internet could access them (journal club the journal club.
members must be invited to join).
• They should be easy to use. WORDPRESS.COM
• There should be no costs associated with imple- Although literature searches of MEDLINE and
mentation. CINAHL currently yield no results that discuss the
• The sites should allow archiving and viewing of usage of WordPress.com in a hospital or medical
older posts. setting, the platform is gaining popularity in the li-
In short, the goal was for the online journal club to brary community as an option for blogging software
be the online equivalent of a closed-door meeting, and a customizable content management system for
mirroring the existing face-to-face clubs as much as Web sites.1, 2 For tech-savvy individuals or those at in-
possible. stitutions looking for a more customizable platform
Considering the options. Having established crite- that can be hosted and maintained locally, install-
ria, the nurse educators contacted me, the hospital’s ing the open source software from WordPress.org
electronic resources librarian, and together we ex- may be an optimal solution. The features offered by
plored several options that met the requirements for WordPress.com (hereafter referred to in this article
the trial journal club site. We discovered that the com- as “WordPress”) were found to be more than suffi-
pany with which the hospital’s information technol- cient for the needs of the online journal club imple-
ogy (IT) department contracts for intranet services mentation at the Christ Hospital.

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 iNURSE

Ultimately, we chose WordPress because of its ease questions and answers to the most common prob-
of use and free implementation, as well as because lems faced by users. If the answer to your question
it met all the requirements outlined for the journal cannot be obtained here, or through the online sup-
club. WordPress is also compatible with multiple In- port forum, a Wordpress staff member may be con-
ternet browsers (Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 and tacted through an online form.
9, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Safari), com-
puter operating systems (Windows XP, Windows 7, IMPLEMENTATION
Windows 8), and Mac operating systems, as well as Registering the site. The first step to creating an on-
having customizable themes, some of which also in- line journal club is to go to the WordPress sign-up
clude mobile-optimized Web interfaces. Although page (https://signup.wordpress.com/signup) and reg-
WordPress does not allow for encrypted sites, there is ister the blog address (Figure 1). The WordPress URL
an option to make a site private—meaning it is not standard is: http://[blogaddress].wordpress.com. Each
indexed by search engines and should not be listed WordPress blog address must be unique. During this
in Web search results. A private WordPress Web site sign-up step, a user name and password are also cre-
also means that site members must be invited to view ated. At our hospital, I created an administrator user
the site content and make comments. In other words, name, which was used to create and administrate nu-
a private WordPress site is not viewable by the gen- merous journal club sites throughout the hospital.
eral public. For a less centralized online journal club platform, the
The most important factor in choosing WordPress WordPress site could be registered to an individual—
was the do-it-yourself level of implementation: the perhaps the head of a unit council or a nurse educa-
unit journal club representatives and I were able to de- tor who had been overseeing the existing face-to-face
sign and implement the online journal club site with- journal club—who would then serve as the adminis-
out having to involve the hospital’s IT department, trator for one journal club.
thus expediting the process. WordPress also has excel- The new site is then activated through an e-mail
lent online support (http://support.wordpress.com) sent to the administrator, after which the adminis-
in the form of easy-to-understand and easy-to-utilize trator may make additional customizations, such as

Figure 1. WordPress.com Site Sign-Up and Blog Registration

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Figure 2. Making the WordPress.com Site Private

changing the theme or appearance of the site or the the site can pretty much be used as is or “right out of
site title. The site title defaults to the blog address but the box.” However, the newly created site does not
may differ from the blog address, if desired. The ad- automatically default to a private site, so the site ad-
ministrator may change the site title at any time from ministrator must manually change the site’s privacy
the general settings menu in the administrator mod- settings within the Dashboard. Under the “Settings”
ule, which WordPress refers to as the “Dashboard.” tab, there is an option for “Reading.” Click this to
Site privacy. For the purposes of online journal go the “Reading Settings” page. Here, scroll down
clubs in a clinical hospital setting, we decided that it to the “Site Visibility” category and click the option
was important to make the WordPress sites private to for “I would like my site to be private, visible only to
protect the privacy and confidentiality of the nurses users I choose” (Figure 2). This will make the site in-
involved, as well as to encourage and facilitate discus- vitation only. If this option is not selected, the journal
sion. However, it’s important to note that although club content—both journal article discussion posts
the WordPress online journal club sites are private and users’ comments—will potentially be visible to
Web sites—in the sense that members have to be in- anyone on the Internet and the site will be listed in
vited to view the content and the sites are neither in- online search engine results.
dexed by search engines, such as Google, nor visible Adding journal articles. Before inviting new mem-
in online search results—the sites are not encrypted bers to the private site or advertising its creation to the
for security purposes. This means that, although it’s journal club members, a member at the administrator
unlikely anyone who hasn’t been invited will access or editor level must create the first journal article post.
the site, it’s essential that journal club members are (An administrator can assign various levels of access
warned not to share in their posts or comments any and control to invited users, in descending order from
confidential information, protected health informa- administrator to editor to author to contributor.) By
tion, or anecdotes that could be used to identify a pa- default, when a new site is created, WordPress adds a
tient. It is also advisable that each site have a journal sample post and comment in the “Posts” area of the
club member serve at the administrator or editor Dashboard. This post can be modified within the text
level, with the ability to delete or modify other mem- editor to serve as the first journal article for discussion
bers’ comments if protected health information is (Figure 3).
inadvertently shared. Before the administrator edits the WordPress
For the most part, WordPress is a turnkey system, placeholder post, the journal article must be selected.
meaning that there are very few steps to implementing To most easily comply with copyright regulations,
or customizing the journal club, and after sign-up, it is advisable to choose an article to which your

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 iNURSE

institution has electronic access, posting a link to the areas for policy change at our hospital. Some clubs
article rather than uploading a PDF of the article to have even adopted a model similar to that used in ac-
the online journal club site.3 When using a journal ademia for commenting on course discussion boards
article from a subscription database provided by and have asked online journal club participants to re-
your institution, locate the permalink (which typi- ply both to one of the questions posed and to a com-
cally differs from the URL in the address bar and is ment made by another journal club participant.
short for “permanent link”) for the full-text article. Inviting users. Once the first post has been cre-
In EBSCO’s CINAHL Plus with Full Text, for ex- ated, the site is now ready to add contributors. If the
ample, the permalink is found in the article’s “De- site is private, users must be invited by a site admin-
tailed Record” display by clicking on the permalink istrator via the WordPress Dashboard to view and
tool in the right sidebar. This permalink can then be comment on the article discussions posted on the site.
copied and pasted into the post draft using Word- When logged in as an administrator, inviting new us-
Press’s post editor from within the Dashboard. ers is as simple as going to the site’s Dashboard and
adding e-mail addresses by clicking “Invite New” un-
der the “Users” tab (Figure 4). Invitees will then re-
Once the first post has been ceive an e-mail from WordPress with an invitation
to create a free WordPress account if they don’t al-
created, the site is now ready ready have one and to accept the invitation to join
the private online journal club site. Once the users
to add contributors. have created their personal WordPress account and
accepted the invitation to the site, they will be able
to log in, view the online journal club article, and
In stimulating online journal article discussion, post comments.
we’ve found that the most successful approach is to Additional benefits. As new posts are added,
ask questions about the article as discussion prompts WordPress automatically adds them to an archives
for participants, who can then leave comments in re- section by the date the post was made. There’s also
sponse to a specific post. These questions may simply an option to back- or postdate journal club article
be a means of generating discussion or of focusing dis- posts. If a club previously met face-to-face and has
cussion on aspects of the article that may be potential notes from these past meetings, these articles and

Figure 3. Adding or Editing a New Post

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Figure 4. Inviting New Users to Your Private Site

notes can be uploaded as new posts and backdated and nurse leaders are available, as am I, for additional
to document the club’s history. This can be done by assistance if needed. For the most part, users accus-
clicking “Edit” next to “Publish immediately” in tomed to interacting socially on sites such as Face-
the right sidebar of the post editor and changing book or making comments on online news Web sites
the “Publish date” to a date in the past. Likewise, if are already familiar with the conventions of reading
an online journal club coordinator has several arti- online content and discussing it with others through
cles selected for the next few months, these can all posting comments.
be uploaded at one time and scheduled to post on cer- In summary, WordPress has provided an easy-to-
tain dates using the postdating capabilities within implement, do-it-yourself solution to establishing
the “Add New” section under the Posts tab on the online journal clubs throughout the Christ Hospital.
WordPress Dashboard. WordPress also gives users The clean, easily navigated, and in some instances
the option to “follow” the site, which will automati- customizable designs of most WordPress site themes
cally send e-mails when new posts are available. make WordPress an ideal choice for multigenera-
tional online journal clubs. The sites have been met
WHERE WE ARE NOW with enthusiasm by almost all involved, and they
As of this writing, 18 online journal club sites have continue to post new content and add additional
been created at our hospital, with 240 current online members. We expect that more online journal club
journal club members and 548 comments on 78 posts. sites will be added to make it easier for nurses on
The online journal club nurse leaders are responsible all shifts throughout the hospital to participate. ▼
for selecting articles and creating discussion ques-
tions, and I oversee adding new journal article posts Emily B. Kean is the electronic resources librarian in the James
and inviting new members for most clubs. N. Gamble Library at the Christ Hospital Health Network,
The biggest limitation to date has been the Word- Cincinnati, OH. Contact author: emily.kean@thechristhospital.
com. The author has disclosed no potential conflicts of interest,
Press sign-up process for new members, which is financial or otherwise.
complicated somewhat by the necessity of making the
online journal club sites private. Orientation sessions REFERENCES
are held for new clubs as a means of assisting nurses 1. Jones KML, Farrington PA. Getting started with WordPress.
with this one-time sign-up process. A “Help” page is Lib Technol Rep 2011;47(3):8-15.
2. Jones KML, Farrington PA. WordPress as a library CMS. Am
also added to each online journal club site, with links Lib 2011;42(5):34.
to WordPress online support. Thus far, these links 3. Brown ML. Online journal clubs for clinicians: ins and outs.
have been sufficient for ongoing technical support, MLA News 2009(419):23.

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