Free nursing textbook? Why not?

One of the things that rubs me the wrong way about nursing school is that we have to buy these gigantic overpriced textbooks when all the information in them is essentially free online. When using online sources for educating myself last semester, though, my instructor warned, "consider the source..." Yeah, all the people on the internet are dumbies and frauds, right? It's not as though most of the posters on wikipedia are professionals and highly knowledgeable amateurs, right?

Well, I just don't understand why there isn't a free, possibly open access, possibly open source textbook, at least for med-surg... or at least for fundamentals. I mean, nurses are more flexible and creative than medical personnel, right? Yet, Textbook Revolution has 15 free biology textbooks and 34 health sciences and medical textbooks. And I know that the US government has even more free medical textbooks. I'm just not sure where they are, but you can find 'em, I guarantee. Some might be listed at New York Emergency Room RN, but a lot the links there seem to be broken.

I found Textbook Revolution through the blog ScienceRoll, which takes the issue even further (the way it should be taken) with this post on Second Life. There should be:

• A wikipedia-style textbook that doesn't look like wikipedia. I know this sound stupid, but I really think that part of the legitimacy issue with wikipedia is its user interface. In the beginning it was cool. Now it looks amateur-ish. The "wiki" part of wiki-textbooks needs to be hidden behind a fascade.
• A sim-SimMan®. Second Life would be, like, the totally cheaper and idealer way to run bedside simulations. This is so obvious that it can't even stand elaboration!

More on these issues to come... I created a Second Life account tonight...