As readers of JHPN know, our field started in the United States in the late 1970s through the efforts of hospice. The earliest hospices began to transform the culture and experience of serious illness and death, which have now impacted all settings of care. Babies in neonatal units, elders in Alzheimer's disease facilities, those dying in prisons, and those with heart failure in an ICU are dying with the support of palliative care nurses because over 30 years ago, hospice nurses began to show us the way.
Who are your mentors? Who do you mentor? Leaders within palliative nursing are providing excellent care, developing programs, educating their colleagues, and conducting important research, often because a nurse colleague inspired them and supported them amidst what is often not an easy journey of change. But an issue we face now in 2010 is that many of our earliest leaders and mentors from the 1970s to 1980s will retire in the decade ahead, and as they hand off the torch, we must be confident as a profession that we have mentored the next generation of leaders.
The Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association has been keenly aware of this need, and it has implemented many mentorship opportunities. HPNA offers mentorship through chapter activities, sessions at the annual meeting, a leadership weekend, and many other activities. We also need to mentor our nurse colleagues in publication skills so that the important clinical lessons and research of palliative nursing can be shared.
In January 2011, we will begin a new feature of JHPN in which each issue will include a paper coauthored by a senior researcher mentoring a novice author and clinician. The goal of this series will be to apply research to practice and also to mentor the next generation of authors.
Are you someone who could mentor others in publishing? Are you a palliative care nurse with great experience and clinical wisdom to share who just needs a mentor to help get your good work on paper? If so, please contact me. The editorial board of JHPN and I are eager to mentor authors. With some expert guidance, your work can be shared with almost 10,000 members of HPNA and many other readers of the journal.
Betty Ferrell, PhD, MA, FAAN, FPCN
Editor-in-Chief
[email protected]