American Journal of Critical Care. 2007;16: 208-209
Even Newer Directions
By
Michael Muscat.
One of my favorite literary stories involves the submission of a manuscript. In 1781, English historian Edward Gibbon presented the second volume of his gigantic 6-part The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, and met with this response: "Another damned thick, square book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh, Mr. Gibbon?"1(p14)
I always chuckle when I imagine poor Gibbon’s reaction to this glib assessment, but I can’t help thinking of Gibbon at a time like this. Perhaps you’ve noticed that this issue of AJCC brings you "scribblings" of a vastly different order? That the familiar green cover has disappeared? That the entire look and feel of the journal is markedly changed?
All true. You hold in your hands (or, just as likely, view on your screen) a thoroughly redesigned American Journal of Critical Care—a fact that grips the journal’s editors and staff in AACN Publishing with great excitement and mild trepidation.
Granted, the issue is hardly as "thick" or "square" as Gibbon’s multi-volume work, but it is substantial nonetheless, representing months of teamwork and consultation with readers, potential readers, and others. It is our genuine hope that, now that we’re submitting our own "volume" for your evaluation, you find the culmination of our efforts worthwhile, even pleasantly surprising.
 |
What’s New?
|
|---|
In addition to the journal’s added color and more reader-friendly design and layout (courtesy of LeRoy Hinton, our art director), this issue of AJCC boasts new and enhanced features, the likes of which readers consistently have called for.
On the cover, we’ve embraced the much-used and easy-to-remember acronym AJCC, branding it and using it throughout the issue. The cover’s fine art reflects the intelligence and discernment of our readership; each issue will feature a new and fascinating work of our art director’s choosing.
Inside, new features should similarly command attention. Over the years, readers have called for continued high-caliber scientific papers in critical and high acuity care, but an additional message has stood out: Give us something practical we can use now at the bedside! With help from associate editor Mary Jo Grap, we’ve developed the Clinical Pearls page, which summarizes bedside applications from select articles in digest form. See it for yourself on page 259, then feel free to photocopy it for others.
The AJCC Patient Care Page is another eminently practical new feature. When an article’s subject matter dovetails with AACN best practices—whether it’s ST segment monitoring, VAP prevention, or some other topic—the Patient Care Page follows to offer AACN-approved clinical information for caregivers, patients, and their families. (Thanks to AJCC clinical adviser Linda Bell and the AACN Practice Department for this issue’s Patient Care Page on family presence during CPR and invasive procedures in the intensive care unit, page 283.)
Fans of the AJCC journal club feature will see that it is now called Evidence-Based Review, or EBR for short (pp 281–282), and that it includes background information on the source article’s primary investigator. (Ruth Kleinpell continues as EBR contributing editor.) In addition, visitors to the AJCC Web site can read the EBR article (and any current or archived AJCC article) online and discuss it with interested colleagues using eLetters, our new electronic letters feature.
If you’re looking for case reports, you’ll find them in our back pages. Cases of Note is a recurring department that seizes on one patient’s case as a teachable moment, briefly charting the clinical course with careful critical analysis that includes relevant literature review. It begins on page 320.
|
Getting Your Bearings
|
|---|
This is only the beginning. As the field of critical and high acuity care changes, AJCC will continue to offer the latest research on interventions, management issues, technologies, and techniques. Future issues will include more critical commentaries and other material designed to showcase essential data on interdisciplinary evidence-based practice.
To become oriented to all our changes, consult the 2-page primer, "AJCC: A Reader’s Guide," on pp 238–239. It’s a reference map of sections we’ve added and departments we’ve enhanced. Regular features remain, of course. The Editorial and Letters sections, the ECG Puzzler, Cardiology Casebook, Current Controversies in Critical Care—all are here, though they may look slightly different. We hope you find them as engaging and useful as ever.
|
Looking Ahead: A Call for Papers
|
|---|
In their first editorial in AJCC, "New Directions" (a title I’ve pilfered and revised for my own purposes), founding coeditor Christopher Bryan-Brown and current coeditor Kathy Dracup called for a journal "that not only presents the latest in nursing research, practice and thought, but also offers material affecting the whole spectrum of critical care." To achieve this goal, they said, "collaborative work from multidisciplinary and multispecialty groups will be given a high priority."2(p18)
Such collaborative work remains essential for AJCC’s continued excellence and success. We sincerely thank those who have offered their guidance, feedback, and support as we’ve refashioned the journal, and we welcome continued collaboration with readers and other critical care professionals as we move the journal into the 21st century. We also welcome physician coeditor Peter E. Morris, whose debut editorial appears this issue on pp 200–203.
We hope the redesigned AJCC goes a long way toward reaching a simple goal: to make its peer-reviewed scientific content more accessible and relevant to readers. Tell us what you think. Send an e-mail to ajcc{at}aacn.org. (We’ll publish as many letters as possible in the next few issues.) We encourage you to visit www.ajcconline.org, too, where you’ll find information for authors and a call for papers outlining potential topics for new manuscripts. Your submissions are essential to help the journal maintain its status as a premier source for evidence-based science in critical and high acuity care.
Oh, and we promise your peers will be more gracious and collegial in assessing your hard work than was the Duke of Gloucester in assessing Gibbon’s.
FINANCIAL DISCLOSURES
None reported.
|
REFERENCES
|
|---|
- Saunders DA. Editor’s introduction. In: Gibbon E. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. London, England: Penguin Books; 1980:1–24. [Originally published 1952 by The Viking Press.]
- Bryan-Brown C, Dracup K. New directions. Am J Crit Care. 1992;1:17–18.[Medline]
Top
What's New?
Getting Your Bearings
