After starting college, I took a part-time job in a medical internist's private practice. My job involved a bit of everything, including answering the phone, making appointments, rooming patients, and performing ECGs and venipuncture. I was also tasked with sorting the mail. Some might think this a purely mundane task, but I was fascinated by it. You see, this was the 1980s and the only way to get medical information was through printed journals-and my employer received lots of them. In my hands they felt almost regal. I would flip through them, oblivious to the discoveries on their pages but intrigued by the things that I could decipher. The internist would dog-ear torn-out pages, and my job was to categorize and file them. Occasionally he would write the word "important" in the dog-eared corner. This felt like an invitation to read the "important" information on the page. Eager to teach, he would always take the time to explain a study's findings and how it applied to Mr. X or Ms. Y. It was like we had our own little journal club. Unbeknownst to me, he was teaching me how to translate evidence into practice.
Several years later his daughter, an RN, joined the practice. The journal she subscribed to, with its stately name, the American Journal of Nursing, began to arrive at the office. Similarly, whenever there was an interesting article that applied to our practice, she would engage me in a discussion about how it pertained to the patient we just saw, or the diagnosis that was just made, or something new we should try. I was the grateful recipient of her journals, and by the time I started nursing school, I had a healthy archive of AJNs.
AJN was a part of my life even before I became engaged in nursing practice. My first and second publications were in this very journal, and I served as an interim clinical editor for a short period of time. I think it is safe to say that AJN has been a part of many nurses' lives. When I discussed with nonnurses my transition from chief nursing officer of University Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, to AJN's new editor-in-chief, I was impressed by how many knew this publication. Its impact on nursing and beyond is incalculable. I must thank my editorial predecessors and the many talented editorial staff members for creating and sustaining a journal with such a stellar clinical and academic reputation.
October is a special month for AJN, as the journal's first issue appeared in print in October 1900. I have read the words of Sophia Palmer, the journal's first editor, who outlines in her first editorial the important role the journal plays in the profession. It is only fortuitous that my first editorial appears in the October issue, but it's a good time to reflect and commit to her cogent words: "The aim of the editors [is] to present month by month the most useful facts, the most progressive thought, and the latest news that the profession has to offer in the most attractive form."
Editorial leadership is about documenting the best (and sometimes the worst) the profession has to offer. Under my leadership-like that of the editors before me-these pages will serve to document and transform clinical practice and provide a space for nurses to contribute their voices to matters affecting our world today. We will do this by publishing important and relevant research, educating each other about our innovations in practice, debating important topics that affect our practice, keeping patient and population outcomes in focus, and promoting our individual and collective well-being.
In closing, I would like to thank Maureen Shawn Kennedy for the past 12 years of journal leadership and stewardship. As a nurse executive, I can affirm that what has been published in these pages over the last 12 years has indeed influenced practice both at the bedside and in the boardroom. This doesn't happen without a first-rate leader and editorial team.
To our readers and contributors, my journey started when a nurse flipped through these pages and illustrated to me the important work that nurses do. Times have changed since the print-only days and so has AJN. Head over to http://www.ajnonline.com with a friend or colleague and see all that the journal and nursing have to offer.