MCN Collaboration
As a researcher and clinician, I have often sought information about specific best practices from a variety of studies hoping to find a cumulative body of evidence to support an intervention that may improve outcomes for mothers and babies. Many times, I have located numerous rigorously designed studies on the same topic only to find that the interventions and/or outcomes under consideration were defined slightly differently by each research team. These differences hinder comparability of results and the ability to pool results that can strengthen and affirm findings. For example, there are several neonatal and maternal adverse consequences or harm composites used by various researchers that include different types of adverse outcomes measured collectively, because when measured individually, the numbers are too small to be able to have enough "power" to find a significant difference if one exists, based on the intervention under investigation. The inclusion of different factors in the composites and the lack of a universally agreed-upon measure present major challenges in interpreting results and applying them to clinical practice. Wouldn't it be great if there were a core set of outcomes used by researchers studying the same topic? This is not to suggest other aspects of the clinical topic could not be explored in greater detail, but rather to encourage researchers to use a core set of outcomes with agreed-upon definitions that would be used to build a body of evidence. MCN is participating in a project for this purpose (The Core Outcomes in Women's Health [CROWN] Initiative) along with more than 55 other professional journals that publish research about maternity care. This is a very worthy project with the potential to generate improvements in the scientific knowledge of how we care for mothers and babies. For further information, see the guest editorial in this issue by Professor Khalid Khan, Editor-in-Chief of BJOG, An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, http://links.lww.com/MCN/A17.
MCN and Social Media
As more and more nurses use social media, MCN is offering additional opportunities to access our content. Some of you may scoff at this method of communication, but no doubt your children and younger associates engage in the use of social media quite often. Some of our colleagues are never without their smart phones handy. MCN is on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/MCN-The-American-Journal-of-MaternalChild-Nursing/ and http://Twitterhttps://twitter.com/MCNonline. As new articles in MCN are published, the news is transmitted via both of these venues.
New Columns for MCN
Two new columns will be introduced in 2015. Hot Topics in Pediatric Nursing will be coordinated by Judy Beal, DNSc, RN, FNAP, FAAN, an expert in pediatric nursing and well known to MCN readers as one of the coordinators of the Second Opinion column along with Kathleen Leask Capitulo, PhD, RN, FAAN. I am very pleased to introduce two new authors who will be coordinating the column Hot Topics in Maternity Nursing, Kirsten Wisner, MS, RNC, CNS and Molly Killion, RN, MS, CNS. They will be sharing thought provoking maternity nursing topics with direct application to clinical care. I know you will enjoy these two new columns.
MCN 40th Anniversary
Next year will be the 40th anniversary of MCN! We plan to celebrate by having a special topics section that will focus on important content for MCN readers in each of the issues in 2015. Dr. Margaret Freda, MCN Editor Emerita, solicited guest editors among the MCN reviewer panel to develop this series. Six experts volunteered and I am delighted to present all of these wonderful articles throughout 2015.