AJN: Holding the Line on Quality in 2016

In the midst of the day-to-day demands of our lives and the constant multitasking, it’s often hard to step back and think about where the time went. Days and events seem to blur together. During the last week of the year, I like to review my calendar. I find that this exercise helps me put the year in perspective and revisit what I’ve done and who I’ve done it with.

My December editorial, “Taking Care of Business,” addresses how we can sometimes overlook colleagues who go about doing their jobs with little drama or complaint: the volunteers who give their time to free clinics, those who serve in the military or public service, the quietly competent colleagues we work with every day. They can easily become part of the blur of passing days because they show up, do their work, and move on to the next thing that needs to be done.

In the editorial, I briefly mentioned my colleagues here at AJN in that category. The staff works diligently to ensure that all manuscripts are fact-checked for accuracy and are edited to present the content in the best light and form. After a first round of editing, the articles are then copyedited. They’re laid out in page proofs and go through additional proofreading by a copy editor, nurse editors, and the article’s author(s). The process can be painstaking and repetitive, but accuracy and quality don’t happen without careful attention.

While AJN has […]

Editing a Journal: Not Bedside Nursing, But Still an Urgency to Get Things Right

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, AJN editor-in-chief

‘Nurses practice based on what’s in the literature; we need editors who will draw lines and stand firm against publishing biased and inaccurate papers.’

Niklas Bildhauer/ Wikimedia Commons Niklas Bildhauer/ Wikimedia Commons

I recently returned from a meeting in Las Vegas, the land of lights and bells and six-story marquees—and heat (it hit 109 when I was there, but “a dry heat”). The long flight home gave me time to reflect on the meeting I’d attended (of editors of nursing journals) and on what I do.

When I began my nursing career, I always thought I would stay in the acute care setting. I found the fast pace of the ER challenging and never boring. When I moved into a clinical specialist position and then an administrative one, I could still get involved in challenging situations, from dealing with problems that occurred on clinical units or with staff to navigating the politics of hospital committees and community liaisons.

But time passes and paths twist and turn, and here I am the editor of AJN—and it’s the most challenging and professionally fulfilling job I’ve had.

The International Academy of Nursing Editors (INANE for short) meets annually. It’s a loose networking group, mainly held together through a Web site, blog, and […]

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