As we approach the close of our celebratory 35th year of Advances in Skin & Wound Care, we rejoice for all the good things in these past few months. The option of in-person attendance at professional conferences became possible once more. Although virtual options are important to facilitate conference learning, being physically present has the added benefit of informal networking outside of the formal educational sessions. These conversations can enrich experiences, build personal connections, and share practice questions and solutions. Getting to meet and exchange information with someone new can also broaden your horizons.

This was clearly apparent when Dr Ayello attended the 16th International Congress of AMCICHAC - Asociacion Mexicana in Guadalajara. The conference's universal themes of preventing and treating wounds, working in teams, and appropriate resource utilization can improve patient outcomes with reduced costs to healthcare systems. It was also apparent that, during COVID, clinicians have worked hard but had to deliver care under suboptimal circumstances. Insights into unique, culturally sensitive patient-centered concerns, as well as global care perspectives, foreshadow a whole new year for the journal as well as the skin and wound care community. As the official journal for the American Professional Wound Care Association, for further learning as a community, we encourage all of our readers to please make plans now to attend their Wound Week 2023 to be held September 20-24, 2023 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

We continue to support the importance of interprofessional teams. This includes the teams in clinical practice as well as the editorial team for the journal. Thank you again to our Editorial Advisory Board members and peer reviewers (past and present) who so generously give their expertise and time. The combined efforts of both teams resulted in an increased Impact Factor. This is especially thrilling because the formula for calculating Impact Factors changed and many journals saw decreases.

This year also marked a historic important step taken by the American Nurses Association (ANA). The ANA is the oldest professional association for nurses in the US.1 Black nurses were excluded from the ANA until 1964. To begin its journey of racial reckoning, the ANA Membership Assembly unanimously voted yes to adopting the ANA Racial Reckoning Statement (June 11, 2022). This statement is a significant and meaningful first step for the association to "acknowledge its own past actions that have negatively impacted nurses of color and perpetuated systemic racism." The ANA pledges to work with organizations including the National Commission to Address Racism in Nursing. The Commission has defined racism as "assaults on the human spirit in the form of actions, biases, prejudices, and an ideology of superiority based on race that persistently cause moral suffering and physical harm of individuals and perpetuate systemic injustices and inequities." We look forward to learning more about how the ANA will implement this change in policy. Because diversity is important to our mission and vision for the future, we have been planning an issue to celebrate diversity, equity, and inclusion, including culturally sensitive patient care. You will not want to miss the February 2023 issue of Advances!

Within routine clinical practice, this month's journal issue provides more evidence about end-of-life care. The continuing education article by Dr Kondra and colleagues supports the conviction that patients have the right to die with dignity, including the option of palliative surgery. The authors report a multi-institutional retrospective study of patients with fungating malignant wounds. Their data include patient characteristics, treatment history, and outcomes. The authors provide evidence to support their belief that even in the "era of advancing technologies and medical innovation, the benefits of palliative surgery, which helps mitigate an open wound, should not be overlooked." We support "death with dignity" and the authors' conclusion that "Improving end-of-life care benefits the patient and families[horizontal ellipsis] providing palliative resection to enable death with dignity might be the most humane service of all." What about you?

Elizabeth A. Ayello, PhD, MS, BSN, RN, CWON, ETN, MAPWCA, FAAN

R. Gary Sibbald, MD, DSc (Hons), MEd, BSc, FRCPC (Med Derm), FAAD, MAPWCA, JM

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