March is always a disconcerting month for me. At first, I'm happy to see it on the calendar because it signals that here in the Northeast we've made it through the "real" winter. But then an icy blast of arctic weather arrives to remind us that spring is still weeks away. I spend the month holding my breath in anticipation of what it will bring. This year is no different, as we navigate what appears to be the never-ending COVID-19 pandemic, and hope that Omicron is the last significant variant we will have to face.
March is also Red Cross Month, and each year we like to highlight the organization and its volunteers at work. This year, our cover photo shows a volunteer and a young Afghan refugee with cerebral palsy who is being temporarily housed with her family at a military base in New Mexico. According to the Red Cross's website, about 13,000 nurses volunteer in disaster response, blood donation programs, and community safety training. This year, the organization is particularly busy, with the worst blood shortage crisis in decades, brought on by the pandemic, as well as unprecedented floods, tornados, and wildfires. I'm always impressed by the resourceful nurses who pick up and go at a moment's notice, offering help and hope to people who have lost everything. (See On the Cover for more on the Red Cross's work. There's also a podcast with Linda MacIntyre, chief nurse of the American Red Cross, available at http://www.ajnonline.com.)
This month also marks the beginning of our staff's third year working remotely to produce this journal. March 16, 2020, was the last time we worked at the AJN editorial offices in midtown Manhattan. I remember that New York City locked down that day because it was the day before St. Patrick's Day. The city was preparing for that annual day of (mostly) controlled chaos when crowds of green-clad revelers roam the streets. Of course, that year the parade was canceled because of the pandemic-the first time the parade wasn't held since it began in 1762. Since that day, we've had our share of changes at the journal: some staff retired and new staff joined; logistical challenges arose from the pandemic; and we moved to new offices-a move that was organized virtually. Like many people in all sorts of industries, we had to come up with new processes and workarounds to meet deadlines and keep the journal on track.
Nurses, of course, have always been adept at creating workarounds and innovating processes to save time and improve care. This talent served us well during the pandemic, as nurses devised ways to connect patients and families, reduce exposure to infected patients, incorporate students into practice teams, and create interdisciplinary teams to safely reposition patients to improve oxygenation. We've reported on several of these innovations over the last few months, and in this issue, we introduce a column called Nurse Innovators. In this new series, we'll highlight how nurses and engineers work together to bring nurses' product ideas to completion. We hope it will inspire creativity and help readers put their ideas into action and get the credit they deserve.
I also hope nurses will continue to write about their experiences during the pandemic. There's still a lot we need to know about best practices for managing patients with COVID-19 in acute care and caring for the long haulers, dealing with children who've had developmental delays and mental health trauma, and helping health care workers recover from what they've been through. And then there are all those individuals who have had to delay treatment for other, non-COVID-related conditions, and the impact this has had on their health.
Hope is what we live on these days-hope that spring will bring an end to COVID-19 surges; hope that as more people get vaccinated, or achieve immunity by surviving the virus, we can return to near-normal routines; hope that the health system will take this wake-up call to heart and institute changes such as better staffing and real workplace improvements before nurses turn their backs on it forever. Hope may be hard to find at times, but it's what sustains us.