Need Motivation to Write? Submit to the AJN/Nurse Faculty Scholars Mentored Writing Award

You know you should write, and you have several topics running through your mind, but you just can’t quite get it together—how to start, how to choose the topic, where to start . . . .

Well, you don’t have to go it alone.

Mentored writing.

The 2020 AJN/Nurse Faculty Scholars Mentored Writing Awards program is open for submissions. This is an annual program to promote mentorship and develop scholarly writing skills among nurses. It was conceived by the 2012–2015 cohort of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Nurse Faculty Scholars Program, in honor of the mentorship they received.

This award was created to continue the legacy of mentorship and to support scholarship development for all nurses, and AJN is continuing this program as part of our mission to support excellence in nursing publishing.

The 2019 winner.

The winner of the 2019 award is Sara Wohlford, MPH, RN, from Roanoke, Virginia. She worked with her mentor, Kimberly Ferren Carter, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, to coauthor their winning article, “Nursing Engagement Improves Sustainability Outcomes for Healthcare,” which will be published later this year. […]

2020-01-07T11:52:02-05:00January 7th, 2020|Nursing|0 Comments
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AJN Off the Charts: Our Top 10 Posts of 2019

Here are the top 10 posts on AJN’s blog from the past year.

Most of the posts below are as relevant today as when published. They are from a variety of voices, on a variety of topics, from the very personal to urgent matters of clinical practice. Starting with #10:

10. Being a Bully and Being Bullied

9. Nurses Week: A Time to Reflect on the Incredible Work Nurses Do

8. Safety Starts with Self When Giving Chemo

7. Control: Ninety, and Still Haunted by a Husband’s Dying Promise

6. Morphine in Hospice Care: Why Family Members May Resist Its Use

5. If We Know How to Prevent Falls, Why Are Our Patients Still Falling?

4. Experienced Bedside Nurses: An Endangered Species?

3. What’s a Preceptor’s Duty When a New Nurse Doesn’t Fit the Unit?

2. Protocol to Reduce Hospital-Acquired Pneumonia Improves Outcomes, Lowers Costs

1. Case of Nurse Charged with Homicide for Medication Error Raises Concerns

2019-12-27T12:11:20-05:00December 27th, 2019|Nursing|0 Comments
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Nurses Week: A Time to Reflect on the Incredible Work Nurses Do

The Nurses Week theme this year as set by the ANA, “4 Million Reasons to Celebrate,” points to our numbers. I appreciate the concept, but I’m not in love with this theme—I don’t think our numbers are what make us worth celebrating.

What really matters.

What we should celebrate is nurses’ continued commitment, day after day, to making people’s lives better. Sometimes, that takes effort that goes above and beyond. That’s the focus of my May editorial, “The Unwavering Courage of Nurses.” It’s also depicted in the May issue cover photo (for background, read “On the Cover“): nurses literally running for their lives and the lives of their patient, just ahead of flames from the deadliest fire in California’s history. And it’s what makes some Red Cross nurses so special: see this article by Debby Dailey and Linda MacIntyre (listen to the podcast of my conversation with the authors, too).

I think Nurses Week is important, not so much for the public who, judging by their votes in the most recent Gallup poll, already think highly of us (a good reminder for nurses’ employers […]

2019-05-03T08:39:55-04:00May 3rd, 2019|Nursing, nursing career|0 Comments
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A Call to Address Fatigue to Protect Nurse Health and Patient Safety—from 1919

The evidence on nurse fatigue has been there all along.

During Women’s History Month, which is about to end, I’ve been posting (here and here) on nursing history (and in the process exploring its close confluence with women’s history). For this last post, I’m highlighting an article published in the March 1919 issue of AJN—exactly 100 years ago. The evidence on fatigue from long working hours has been there all along.

“The Movement For Shorter Hours in Nurses’ Training Schools” (free until April 15; click on the pdf version in the upper right), was written by Isabel Stewart, who was professor and then director of the nursing program at Teachers College, Columbia University, and coauthor of the National League for Nursing Education (the forerunner of today’s National League for Nursing) Standard Curriculum for Schools of Nursing.

A call for 8-hour work days for nurses.

In this article, which is in some ways disturbingly relevant today, Isabel Stewart notes that major nursing organizations recently met and were seeking “to enlist the support of a great many influential organizations and the general public in establishing an eight-hour day and a fifty-two hour week for pupil nurses.” (As a reminder, hospital nursing staff at that time were mostly nursing students.)

Fatigue […]

2019-03-29T11:07:06-04:00March 29th, 2019|Nursing, nursing history, patient safety|3 Comments
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AJN Wants You! A Call for Peer Reviewers and Authors

nurse typing on keyboardTake your career to the next step—become a peer reviewer or author.

For over 118 years, AJN has presented its readers with timely and informative content to support best nursing practice and to examine issues of the day that are relevant to nurses and the profession. While that’s still our aim today, content development is more complex—it now includes peer review; fact-checking to ensure accuracy; citing evidence from the literature; ethical guidelines that govern editor, reviewer, and author behavior; careful editing to meet standards for quality writing; transparency to avoid bias and conflicts of interest. We’re proud of our commitment to high standards, and our success is borne out by the many awards we’ve received—more than any other nursing journal.

All of this wouldn’t be possible without the help of peer reviewers and authors, who commit to making the content we publish the best that it can be: timely, accurate, readable, and useful.

Peer reviewers are essential to any scholarly journal.

Peer-reviewing is also an excellent way for fledgling writers to better understand what editors look for in manuscripts. We welcome new reviewers who have expertise in nursing, are current with the literature and practice in their area of expertise, have a master’s degree or higher (or a BSN and certification in a specialty area), and are willing to review three to six manuscripts a […]

2018-07-12T11:15:23-04:00July 12th, 2018|Nursing, nursing career, writing|0 Comments
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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