Thirty years ago, in April of 1994, the inaugural issue of the Journal of Trauma Nursing (JTN) was published. The founding editors were Connie Walleck, Peggy Fridlund-Hollingsworth, and Eileen Whalen. You may know grit when you see it-These three nurses personified it. They had a passion for trauma, the perseverance to succeed, and the willingness to fail, all of which define grit (Duckworth, 2016). They faced incredible odds to get JTN off the ground as there was no ready supply of nurse authors, and they had minimal publishing experience. But these editors were savvy and resourceful. They initiated creative sections in the journal such as JTN news, case studies, legal dimensions, trauma library in review, the top 10, sharing our best, and started a first-time authors program. Within the first 2 years, they had grown from publishing two to four issues a year, with up to six articles per issue. All of this was accomplished in addition to their regular jobs running major trauma centers and serving simultaneously in various Society of Trauma Nurses (STN) board positions, including President for the initial years of STN's existence. Talk about grit.

Peggy Fridlund-Hollingsworth and Eileen Whalen continued to serve as Editors of JTN for the first 12 years, through 2005. Over those years, several milestones were achieved. The first two clinical articles published in JTN Issue 1 were both landmarks. Gallo and Keane-Guercio (1994) wrote a detailed initial assessment of the trauma patient, and Smith (1994) wrote a detailed initial assessment of the pregnant trauma patient, both of which stand up to today's standards. The first research article appeared in Issue 2, with an analysis of nurse knowledge and attitudes toward organ donation (Featherstone, 1994). Other notable early articles include the 1995 STN conference message from Richard Carmona, MD, who started his career as a trauma nurse and who rose to the position of U.S. Surgeon General (Carmona, 2005), and James Styner's, MD, riveting story of the origins of Advanced Trauma Life Support, created out of the anguish of his family's 1976 airplane crash (Styner, 2006).

The year 2006 was a pivotal year for JTN. Under Marla Vanore, then STN President, the journal transitioned to a new publisher, Lippincott Williams and Wilkins (Wolters Kluwer), and hired a new editor-Kathryn Schroeter, who served from 2006 to 2018, a longevity display of grit. She oversaw a wide expansion of the journal, which included many innovative article sections and journal improvements, a move to include the global trauma community, and an increase of up to 10 articles per issue and six print issues published annually. Kathryn's grit was also personified as a tireless, passionate advocate to spark nurses' interest in writing for publication. As the journal grew under her guidance, many seasoned authors today found the grit to submit their first article to JTN due to Kathryn's relentless push, optimism, and support. Kathryn was the right Editor in the right place at the right time to grow JTN.

Review articles logically dominated the early years of JTN, with a steady increase in submissions of varied evidence hierarchy noted across time, mirroring the advancement of our profession. Several of JTN's firsts include the following: (1) the first continuing education credits article on the care of the morbidly obese with spinal cord injury (Beck et al., 1996); (2) the first physician author writing on the value of clinical management protocols (Fuss & Pasquale, 1998); (3) the first non-U.S. submission from Australia on pediatric head injuries (Wyllie, 1998); (4) the first prospective clinical trial that studied the "teachable moment" associated with the effect of safety education on classmates of injured children (Cook et al., 2006); (5) the first mixed-methods study on a family program for traumatic brain-injured patients (Lefebvre et al., 2007); and (6) the first qualitative study on family members' perceptions of nurses' caring behaviors (Clukey et al., 2009).

The year 2023 begins my fifth year as Editor. The past 5-year milestones include a journal redesign, updated reviewer feedback specific to article type, incorporation of EQUATOR reporting guidelines, CREDIT, and ORCID requirements, and an expanded reviewer pool, including statisticians, medical librarians, and psychologists. The journal offers a portfolio of article types ranging from case reports, innovations, concise reviews, quality improvement, and quantitative and qualitative research, culminating with systematic reviews and meta-analyses. I hope to continue to display the grit of my predecessors and build upon their work to meet JTN's mission of delivering the highest quality evidence to trauma teams globally.

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