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Posts from the ‘Journal Information’ Category

Dec 19

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Cultivating Nursing Leadership for Our Envisioned Future


In this “Editor’s Pick” featured article, author Lee Galuska, MSN, RN, summarizes the result of a metasynthesis of qualitative studies on nursing leadership development.  Her analysis offers significant evidence that can shape leadership development programs and curricula.  Galuska described the development of this research:

This article emerged out of my passion for promoting excellence in nursing leadership.  As I started my doctoral work, the driving questions centered on effective nursing leadership in healthcare organizations.   In exploring leadership models and theories, I became interested in complexity science and leadership in complex adaptive systems. I became intrigued with the work of Tim Porter O’Grady and Kathy Malloch on quantum leadership.  Their discussion of leadership in complex health care systems helped to shape my studies.  For nurse leaders, an understanding of complexity science and the behavior of complex systems is essential for creating the conditions for leadership to emerge in nurses throughout the system.

As I was learning more about leadership and complexity, the Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health report was released.  The report reflected a recognition that our healthcare system is a complex adaptive system and that in order to achieve the outcomes of a transformed system and a healthier nation, nursing leadership development was critical.  That triggered my pursuit of understanding how best to cultivate nursing leadership

Lee Galuska

Lee Galuska

competency in nurses at all levels.   I wanted to study it from the perspective of nurses themselves.  I wanted to find out what nurses had found to be effective in helping them to develop leadership competency.

I had the good fortune at that time to be studying qualitative research methods with Cheryl Beck at the University of Connecticut.  Under Cheryl’s guidance I began to conduct a metasynthesis of qualitative studies of nurses’ experience with leadership development.  That work ultimately evolved into three metasyntheses.  This article focuses on the role of the context or environmental considerations on the development of nursing leadership competencies.  Another focuses on the role of purposeful, guided experiential learning and the third on formal leadership learning strategies.  My hope is to propose a model or “bundle” for effective nursing leadership development at all levels.

This is an important article that can inform efforts to bring the recommendations of the “Future of Nursing” report to reality.  Visit the ANS web site and download your free copy of this article today!

Nov 29

Update on Future Issue Topics!


We  have added a new issue topic for ANS 37:3 – Health Equities!  Here is our complete list of future topics; follow the links for the issue topics to see a description of the kinds of manuscripts we are seeking for each.

36:3 – Peace & Health – September 2013
Manuscript Due Date – January 15, 2013

36:4 – Innovations in Health Care Delivery – December 2013
Manuscript Due Date – April 15, 2013

37:1 – Emerging Theories for Practice – March 2014
Manuscript Due Date – July 15, 2013

37:2 – Relationships & Health – June 2014
Manuscript Due Date – October 15, 2013

37:3 – Health Equities – September 2014
Manuscript Due Date – January 15, 2014

Nov 18

NEW! ANS for the iPad!


Just released – the ANS app for the iPad!    The app is free, and for a limited time, you will have access to all the current issue contents to read and download!  I am very excited about this feature.  For quite a while now many folks have speculated about the future of journal publishing, and the possibility of paper becoming obsolete. The time has not arrived for paper to disappear for ANS, nor for most professional journals, but the arrival of the ANS app for the iPad certainly unveils a new possibility!

Soon we will begin featuring video abstracts of articles provided by the authors, and these will be directly accessible on the iPad.  Links to the video abstracts will also be available on article PDF files, and will be noted in the paper issue of the journal.  But the iPad app opens up a realm of many multi-media possibilities!  Watch for these as they begin to appear in the months to come!  Download the app today to begin exploring this great new journal feature!

 

Oct 3

Evidence supporting father-friendly care for families


One of our “Editor’s Picks” for the current ANS issue is the article titled “Transition to Fatherhood: Modeling the Experience of Fathers of Breastfed Infants.”  The authors, Francine deMontigny, Carl LaCharite and Annie DeVault, describe a research project in which they examined a model of the relationships among father involvement, perceived parental efficacy, events related to breastfeeding, support, stress, and income with a sample of 164 fathers of breastfed infants.  The lead author, Dr. deMontigny, whose photo is featured here, describes their work that led to this study:

For over 15 years, I have been meeting with fathers, their partner, health professionals, to hear their point of view of what influences this transition. Needless to say, their spouse is an important source of support. But it stands out that nurses too can make a difference in fathers’ experience. Every time a nurse remarks positively about fathers’ abilities with their newborn, she contributes to strengthening the relationship between the father and the child. Our team has developed the Father Friendly within the Family Initiative to support health professionals in their efforts to build stronger ties with fathers and their families. We strongly believe that engaged fathers contribute to the family’s development.

This article is available for free download now!  So visit the ANS web site, and discover this and many other recent articles that can shape the future of nursing practice!

Aug 31

Improving transition outcomes


Carol Geary and Karen Schumacher explain some of the most vexing issues in nursing care – effective transitions for patients who move from one care setting to another.  The evidence points to major issues in health care that add up to astounding costs – readmissions for Medicare patients alone add up to billions of dollars.  Geary and Schumacher address this issue theoretically by proposing an integration of transitions theory and complexity science.  Their work provides a new and expanded perspective that can improve outcomes for people who are transitioning from hospital to home.
Carol Geary shares this message about her work:
My research addresses care transitions from hospital to skilled nursing facilities among aging patients with advanced chronic disease. I am specifically interested in the multiple perspectives of patients, informal caregivers, and health care providers as described within this paper and suggested by viewing the phenomenon through a complexity lens.
Professionally, as an administratively focused nurse functioning both within and as a consultant to hospitals, the dynamic of care “across the continuum” intrigued me. When Dr. Sheila Ryan introduced me to complexity science in an informational interview for the PhD program in nursing at UNMC, my initial response was: “THIS changes everything.”  After two years of study, I remain fascinated by the challenge of viewing the world through this new lens.

Aug 15

“Editor’s Picks” available now!


We have added a new feature to the ANS web site … Editor’s Picks from the current issue.  The Editor’s Picks will change every couple of weeks, and while an article is featured, it will be available for a free download!  Each week I will post information on this blog about one of the articles on the current “Editor’s Picks” list, giving some background and information about the article that I believe makes the article important for our readers.

Barbara Reigel (University of Pennsylvania), with her colleagues from Sweden Tiny Jaarsma and Anna Strömberg (Linköping University) are the authors of one of our first features, titled “A Middle-Range Theory of Self-Care of Chronic Illness.”  The theory was developed from self-care studies that the authors have conducted in several countries around the world; the article cites the studies so that you can trace the specific evidence on which the theory is based.

The authors address a central concern of nursing practice – the nature of the relationship between a nurse and a patient.  They explain the connection between that relationship and self-care of chronic illness as follows:   “When providers interact with patients their intention is that the partnership they form will motivate patients to engage in self-care that can be incorporated into their lifestyle. It is within this context of a mutually rewarding relationship that the self-care of chronic illness takes place.”

This theory was developed from sound research evidence, and in turn it provides an important resource to guide nursing practice.  It is based on deep analysis and clarification of some of the most persistent challenges that nurses face in building relationships with people living with chronic illness. This article  is an exemplar of one approach to the development of nursing theory that serves to guide nursing practice.

Check out the article now and add your ideas and thoughts about this article by replying to this post!  I look forward to hearing from you!

Jun 17

Future Table of Contents – Transitions


I just posted the Table of Contents for the September issue of ANS (Vol 35:3) on the web site!  There will be 14 articles in this issue.  All will be online; and about half will be in the paper volume.

The concept of transitions has been a significant focus for nursing scholars for several decades. Afaf Meleis, who has been a member of the ANS advisory board for many years, was a leader in articulating a theory of transitions for nursing.  Her work has provided a foundation for many of the scholars whose work appears in this issue of the journal.  These articles provide a rich range of approaches to the conceptualization of this phenomenon in a variety of settings, with several different population groups, and with important implications for practice. Taken together, the articles provide a thought-provoking collection representing the best of nursing scholarship.

Take a look at the titles that will be in this issue.  Several of the articles will be published ahead of print, and available for download when they appear in the “Published Ahead of Print” section of the web site.  And of course all of the articles will be available as soon as the publication date arrives – early in September 2012!

Jan 15

Finding a Home for your manuscript

Finding a “home” for your manuscript


One of the most important tasks for any author, new or seasoned, is finding a place to have your scholarly work published.  These days one “criteria” that many authors use is to find out which journals have high impact factor scores, and then pursue publication in Finding a Home for your manuscriptone of those journals.  While there are many reasons that authors start here, it is not always the best place to begin!

The Impact Factor scoring system is managed and reported by Thomson-Reuters through their Web of Knowledge service.  While this is a valuable resource, the fact is that some very high quality and important journals will never be represented in this system.  Any journal that publishes work that has a very narrow audience – scientists and scholars working in a very focused field of study – will never attract others to their publication, and therefore their publications will not be widely cited.  This is actually a dynamic that effects scores for nursing journals, since our journals have not yet attracted widespread use by scholars outside of the field of nursing and some related health professions.  A journal such as the New England Journal of Medicine, for example, that many people both in and outside of the health professions use and cite, will carry a much higher impact factor score than any of our nursing journals (yet!).

However, back to the focus of this blog — what is the best way to find a “home” for your manuscript?  The first and most important task is to consider which journals reach the audience that you want your article to reach.  You can browse a comprehensive list of nursing journals, with links to their “Information for Authors,” on the Nurse Author-Editor web site.   Once you find journals that might reach your intended audience, the next challenge is to study the journal’s statement of purpose, recently published issues, and requirements for manuscript preparation and submission.

Like most other journals,  ANS has everything you need right at your fingertips on line!

  • To determine if your manuscript is appropriate for the journal, check out the list of future issue topics in the right column of the home page. Since we are a topical journal you need to first determine if your manuscript has a good fit with our future topics.  You can find a description of each of the topics when you click on any of the listed topics.
  • For detailed information about the purpose of ANS, go to the “For Authors” tab of the home page.  Here is the direct link to the “ANS Information for Authors.”
  • On our home page, you can also browse the Table of Contents for each issue ever published in ANS, as well as abstracts of the articles.  All articles are available for online purchase if you do not have access through a library.

Questions?  Post them here in the comments for this post, and we will post the answers!

Jan 6

Health focus
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Why ANS is a Topical Journal


One of the unique features of ANS is that it has maintained the “Issue Topic” focus for each issue.  When we began publication in 1978, the publisher at the time (Aspen Publishers) wanted all of their journals to conform to a topical format.  Since this was my first experience as a journal editor, and was primarily focused on getting the journal Health focusunderway, I happily agreed!  As an aside, the Aspen managing editor I worked with, Wally Hood, also designed the ANS cover, which has remained constant as well.

When Lippincott, Wolters & Kluwer assumed publication of the journal in 2002, they were open to making changes in the journal and we discussed several options.  Our Senior Publisher, Sandy Kasko, agreed that the cover design should remain the same because of the distinctive identification it brought to the journal.  We also agreed that the topical format should remain as a distinctive feature of the journal, and the Advisory Board members have remained committed to our topical format.

The primary reason remains this: our topics call forth scholarship that might otherwise be neglected in nursing’s literature.  It encourages prospective authors Read more

Sep 14

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Reflections on the current issue: Trauma & Stress


The current issue of ANS is now available on our ANS Web site, and it promises to another issue of lasting influence!  If you have not already done so, take a look at the Table of Contents and see for yourself what this issue contains.  We will be featuring each of these articles in the “Featured Articles” section of the web site, and while they are featured you will be able to download them at no cost.  If you are a journal subscriber, you have access to all of the articles in not only this issue, but all issues of ANS published since the beginning in 1978!

Given that ANS articles are unsolicited, we can never predict the content profile of any single issue.  We publish issue topics well in advance of the date by which manuscripts must be submitted to considered for each issue, but we leave the interpretation of issue topics open.  But for this issue of ANS, I anticipated that authors might address two substantive areas – trauma and stress brought about by war, and that brought about by violence in the home.  Indeed, both of these areas of concern appeared in the articles we considered for publication, as well as those that were accepted for publication.

Predominantly, nurse authors represented in this issue Read more

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