When I was in my 20s, the prevailing slogan was "Never trust anyone over 30." We were certainly arrogant, eh? We baby boomers saw ourselves as so powerful and all-knowing that we didn't think anyone older than us could possibly know as much. That kind of overconfident self-esteem propelled us forward to make huge changes in American society, but those of us who lived through those days (and didn't self-destruct) eventually did turn 30 and had to revise our life dictums. When we turned 30 I guess we decided that 30 wasn't so bad after all.
It's a privilege to be able to hold the reins for MCN on this, its 30th anniversary. How incredible that this journal (which is not associated with any professional organization and therefore must be purchased by subscribers just because they choose it) has survived this long!! What a credit to its founding editor, Barbara Bishop; to its publishers (first the American Journal of Nursing Company and now Lippincott Williams & Wilkins); and to all the authors throughout the years who have lovingly written articles for their peers in perinatal and pediatric nursing. I have been the editor of MCN since 1998 (and only the second editor). When I took over the journal, nursing was undergoing a major transition from a tradition-bound profession to an evidence-based one, and I decided to use that as my model for MCN. My goal was to make each issue of MCN half practice and half research articles, and to keep it as the only journal that combined pediatric and perinatal nursing. I'm happy to say that my goal was reached, and now we have about 52% research articles each year. My other goal was to be sure that all the research was clinically applicable, so that MCN could provide the evidence that clinical nurses needed. Our practice articles must be based on the published evidence as well, so essentially MCN is always publishing evidence for practice.
In this, our official 30th anniversary issue, several of our esteemed Editorial Board members have written full-length articles on the state of the science for their specialty. To make room for these special articles, we are not publishing our ongoing columns in this issue (they will be back in January!!). Each of the authors in this issue has taken very seriously the job of showing the readers which of our practices are based on evidence, and which are not. These articles should be discussed by groups of practicing nurses in all aspects of our specialty. Guiding questions for these groups should be: Why do we do what we do? What is the rationale for our practice? Are we practicing based on the available evidence? What else needs to be studied in this arena? I urge you to bring this issue to work with you and engage your fellow nurses in discussions about evidence-based practice. Most of you will find something of particular interest in this special 30th-anniversary issue of MCN.
I especially want to thank you for your loyalty to MCN. I know that many of you have been subscribers since the journal began and have seen it go through changes while all the time becoming stronger. Everywhere I go nurses tell me how much they love MCN-how they find it easy to read, and how even those who aren't crazy about research read the research articles in MCN!! In the time that I've been the editor, our publisher has increased the number of pages of the journal three different times, reflecting that both advertisers and readers are loyal to MCN.
Well, I'm way past 30 now, but I hope I've shown you that I can be trusted with the journal you love-MCN. Here's to another 30 years of happy reading!!