Greetings and welcome to a new year at JONA's Healthcare Law, Ethics, and Regulation. This issue features several important topics for today's nurse executive. Our continuing education unit feature for this issue addresses drills for management of obstetrical emergencies and the improvements that these drills can make in patient safety. This issue also contains an excellent article regarding ethics consultations and the fact that the issues leading to the need for these consultations can often be identified when the presenting patient is still in the facility's emergency department. La Tonia Wright's column for this issue examines a case of retaliatory reporting by a hospital and raises important questions for consideration if your facility's nurses are unionized. This issue's National Counsel of State Boards of Nursing column addresses programs for transition into practice for new nurses. Given the upswing in nursing school applications, this is an issue that will impact all facilities as we struggle to dig out from under the nursing shortage. As always, your feedback and suggestions are appreciated. Please address questions or comments to me at [email protected].