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from the nurses--for-more-than-great-halloween-costumes dept.
http://hackaday.com/2015/10/21/nurses-create-in-a-medical-makerspace/
University of Texas Medical Branch and an MIT initiative have joined forces to create the first maker space in a hospital. Often nurses see things that would make their jobs easier or a patient's care better and now they can create custom solutions to those problems. They aim to spread this to other hospitals and form a community of medical makers.
Although there are many skilled and dedicated types of health care professionals, nurses are often the main point of contact between the medical establishment and a patient. You will probably spend more time with your nurse–especially in a hospital setting–than any other health care provider. Every patient's needs are different, so it isn't surprising that nurses sometimes improvise unique solutions to help their patients be more comfortable or recover faster.
That's the idea guiding an innovative program called MakerNurse–an initiative backed by MIT and the Robert W. Johnson Foundation. The idea is to encourage nurses to be makers. One of the project's cofounders, Anna Young, had found nurses in Central America making do with what they had on hand and naturally acting as makers. "We saw a nurse repair a stethoscope diaphragm with an overhead transparency," she said. Young noted that often nurses didn't realize the significance of their making–it was just how they got through the day.
(Score: 3, Informative) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday October 28 2015, @12:04PM
It certainly is a trendy hipster word. And it does bother me a bit too. But I have accepted it after visiting a few makerspaces.
Shops were traditionally personal or professional. There needed to be a way for a shop to identify as amateur, open to the public, and friendly to newbies. In a makerspace there is no judgement about one's skills, ideas, or projects. You can go in with zero knowledge along with an idea and someone can help you bring your idea to life. Plus they combine multiple facets such as metalworking, woodworking, electronics, computer programming, as well as arts and crafts. So makerspace perfectly describes that.
(Score: 2) by Covalent on Wednesday October 28 2015, @12:10PM
I can see this - shops can be intimidating I suppose. But that doesn't change the puerile nature of this word. And don't get me started on Maker Fair (or worse still, Maker Faire).
I get it: Making new stuff is a cool thing that more people can do now. But call your new hobby something that doesn't make you sound like a My Little Pony collector. Heck, calling it a "fab" would be better. But then the verb would be "fabbing"...
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.