JOURNAL FOR NURSES IN STAFF DEVELOPMENT GOES GLOBAL

It is the 25th year that the Journal for Nurses in Staff Development (JNSD) has been in publication! One of the highlights of this anniversary year is this issue. JNSD is participating in an International Special Joint Issue, "Towards a Scaling Up of Training and Education for Health Workforce," led by the World Health Organization (WHO) and its journal Human Resources for Health.

This special issue is the outcome of the 2006 World Health Report Working Together for Health, which recognized that healthcare workers are central to the effective operation of the health systems in the countries around the world and identified a global shortage of 4.3 million healthcare workers. This shortage has affected health care in the entire world, particularly in developing countries, and will reach crisis proportions in the coming years.

Thus, the WHO and its publication, Human Resources for Health, conceived the idea of a Joint Special Issue on the problems confronting the healthcare workforce with a focus on the escalating need for education and training for these individuals. Topics for manuscripts submitted for the special issue were to address "the critical need for a skilled, sustainable health workforce in the developing world."

Among the many journals participating in this venture are American Journal of Public Health, Archives of Iranian Medicine, Croatian Medical Journal, New Zealand Medical Journal, Online Brazilian Journal of Nursing, Papua New Guinea Medical Journal, South African Medical Journal, and the Sudanese Journal of Public Health. JNSD is in good company with fellow nursing journals such as International Nursing Review and Nursing Ethics (United Kingdom).

Manuscripts were solicited by the initiators of the project; these submissions were reviewed for relevance and appropriateness to the participating journals. Authors wishing to submit a manuscript to a specific journal had to follow that journal's guidelines for authors, including the peer review process and timelines. Because of the phenomenal response of over 200 manuscripts, the project leaders decided to spread the focus of the Joint Special Issue over an entire calendar year to allow as many accepted manuscripts to be published as possible. Each participating journal was permitted to select the issue in which its focus would be as defined by WHO and Human Resources for Health.

Among the manuscripts submitted to JNSD for review for publication in this special issue, two were chosen. Marja Leena Kukkurainen and her colleagues from Finland have described a training and development project to provide professional education for direct care staff in rheumatology patient care. Mary Schoessler and her colleagues have written about an international workshop series on nursing care of older adults that was designed to develop the healthcare workforce in the area of gerontology in Russia. We are very excited that Mary, who is a member of the JNSD Editorial Board and is from the United States, is an author of one of the articles selected for this special issue.

The international focus of this issue is not new. JNSD has published manuscripts from authors from many countries in addition to the United States, such as Australia, Canada, Finland, Egypt, Japan, and Pakistan. This is the first time, however, that JNSD has been involved in a joint venture with international colleagues. We are pleased and proud to bring you this special issue in cooperation with WHO and Human Resources for Health.