“As we go forward from this difficult year, we should take great pride in the fact that, perhaps for the first time, nurses’ work, commitment, and skills are visible all over the world.”—editor-in-chief Shawn Kennedy in her editorial, “Moving On from the (Unimaginable) Year of the Nurse and the Midwife“

The December issue of AJN is now live. Here are some highlights.

Original Research: Assessing Organizational Focus on Health Literacy in North Texas Hospitals

“This mixed-methods study adds to the growing body of evidence for a lack of health literate practices in health care organizations.”

Community-Acquired Pneumonia: A Review of Current Diagnostic Criteria and Management

This article discusses the 2019 American Thoracic Society/Infectious Diseases Society of America guideline on CAP diagnosis and treatment and provides an update on risk factors, signs and symptoms, and recommendations for treatment, discharge, and prevention.

Special Report: Frontline Nurses Say ‘Never Again’

A summary of a new report from the Frontline Nurses WikiWisdom Forum—an initiative of New Voice Strategies, the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, and AJN—in which nurses share their COVID-19 experiences and offer strategies to successfully manage future health care crises.

Cultivating Quality: Dispensing a Naloxone Kit at Hospital Discharge: A Retrospective QI Project

The authors describe their program to provide naloxone kits and education to hospitalized patients at high risk for an opioid overdose or opioid-related adverse event.

Supporting Family Caregivers: No Longer Home Alone: Managing Home Infusion Therapy

This article—one in a series published in collaboration with the AARP Public Policy Institute—presents instructions and tips nurses can use to educate and support caregivers of people receiving home infusion therapy.

There’s much more in our December issue, including:

  • An AJN Reports on nursing homes and the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • A Transition to Practice article on time management strategies for new nurses.
  • A Reflections column on the importance of meaningful and lasting community connections in medical mission work.

Click here to browse the table of contents and explore the issue on our website.

A note on the cover.

On this month’s cover, a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF; known in English as Doctors Without Borders) mobile medical team embarks on a boat trip to visit communities in Brazil’s largest state, Amazonas—a remote jungle region where residents, many of whom are indigenous, have limited access to health care. The two-week trip was part of MSF’s broad COVID-19 response in Amazonas, which was launched in April as cases of the virus climbed.