I don't know about you, but the small signs of spring that start to pop up this time of year wake me out of my wintertime slump and get me excited about the months to come. Warmer weather is on the way, as well as new opportunities to get out and meet our readers. I am certainly looking forward to attending this year's National Conference for Nurse Practitioners, which is being held in sunny Lake Buena Vista at Disney's Coronado Springs Resort on May 11-14, 2016. I hope you will consider joining us for unique educational sessions that will renew the practical and critical thinking skills you need to improve patient care, and get you excited about the life-changing work you do on a daily basis. The conference provides skill-building sessions and hands-on workshops for both primary and acute care clinicians, so you do not want to miss it! Visit http://www.ncnpconference.com for more information, and be sure to stop by the Wolters Kluwer booth while you are there and say hello!
Springing forward to this new issue, you will notice that we have added abstracts and keywords to our feature articles to provide quick summaries and facilitate online searching of the topic in the literature. Our feature articles cover a wide array of topics, including encephalitis in adults, which is challenging to diagnose and difficult to treat; a look at the new American Heart Association Guidelines Update for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Emergency Cardiovascular Care, which includes new resuscitation strategies; an oral care survey that you can use to document oral care in critically ill patients; information about the actions and possible adverse reactions of vasoactive agents, with guidance on how to titrate hemodynamic medications to achieve therapeutic endpoints; and a look at bark scorpion envenomation, which needs to be recognized early for the best possible patient outcomes.
We also have a new "reimagined" department in this issue-"Research Rounds" is now called "Innovations in Practice," where we will focus on publishing high-quality research, quality improvement, and evidence-based practice projects that are relevant to critical care nursing practice. We hope you will consider submitting manuscripts about your systematic innovations that will have a significant impact on critical care nursing practice to this department!
Please share your feedback about what we are doing right, what we could do better, and what you would like to see in future issues. Write to me at mailto:[email protected], visit our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/nsgcriticalcare, and join us on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/nsgcriticalcare. I look forward to hearing from you!
Cynthia Laufenberg, MA