All Rehabilitation Nursing News

If you are an ARN member or a Rehabilitation Nursing Journal (RNJ) subscriber, you should soon receive your March/April issue in the mail. Check out a preview of the articles that will be gracing the pages of this issue or visit the journal online to read the full issue.

In the January/February issue of Rehabilitation Nursing, there will be a new feature titled This n' That. This is an opportunity for you to share stories of your professional experiences. The editorial board and I are 'feeling our way' with this new feature. Sometimes the feature may offer short stories/vignettes from several contributors. Other times, the entire feature may be one story. For instance, in the January/February issue, there is one story on management of a patient with polypharmacy.

If you are an ARN member or a Rehabilitation Nursing Journal (RNJ) subscriber, you should soon receive your January/February issue in the mail. Check out a preview of two great articles that will be gracing the pages of this issue or visit the journal online to read the full issue.  

Each year at this time, RNJ Editorial Board membership changes and we say goodbye to outgoing members. This year three members are rotating off the board after serving 5 years. Outgoing members are Deborah Almauhy, Terrie Black, and Leslie Neal-Boylan. Deborah is the Chief Nursing Officer of Emory Rehabilitation Hospital in Atlanta. Terrie is a clinical associate professor in the College of Nursing at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Leslie is a nurse practitioner at the Mansfield Kaseman Health Clinic in Rockville, MD. Thank you for your commitment to the journal!

If you are an ARN member or a Rehabilitation Nursing Journal (RNJ) subscriber, you should soon receive your November/December issue in the mail. Check out a preview of three great articles that will be gracing the pages of this issue, or visit the journal online to read the full issue.

Each manuscript submitted to RNJ is processed through the Editorial Manager software system. Melissa Bellows, the RNJ Editorial Assistant, checks the manuscript to make sure that all the pieces are there that the journal requires. This "check" does not look at the quality of the manuscript but looks at the details required in submitting the manuscript. If the manuscript is complete, Melissa forwards it to me as editor-in-chief. I look at every manuscript and decide if the topic is in the scope of the journal and would be of interest to RNJ's readers. If the manuscript is poorly written and there are many gaps in the paper, I might send it back to the author(s), explain the issues and ask them to re-submit. These manuscripts receive a disposition of "revise, no guarantee of publication". Other times if I feel that the manuscript cannot be revised enough to be published, I will send it back to the author with reasons why it did not go out for peer review.

If you are an ARN member or a Rehabilitation Nursing Journal (RNJ) subscriber, you should soon receive your September/October issue in the mail. Check out a preview of three great articles that will be gracing the pages of this issue, or visit the journal online to read the full issue.

We were notified by LWW, Rehabilitation Nursing Journal's publisher, that the impact factor (IF) for 2020 was 1.645. This is an incredible jump from last year's factor of .931. So, what is an impact factor and why are we journal folks so excited about it? Each year in June the journal receives an IF from Journal Citation Reports. This organization tracks citations from 20,000 journals from 113 countries. Journals are from the sciences, arts and humanities, and the social sciences.

If you are an ARN member or a Rehabilitation Nursing Journal (RNJ) subscriber, you should soon receive your July/August 2021 issue in the mail. Check out a preview of three great articles that will be gracing the pages of this issue, or visit the journal online to read the full issue.

Novice writers often find writing for journals intimidating. The internet has brought many other writing opportunities such as blogs, wikis, e-newsletters, etc. Oftentimes these other options can be a 'jump-start' to publishing in a journal or writing a book chapter. What is different, though, is the writing style. On social media, the writing style is conversational versus the scholarly writing in Rehabilitation Nursing. As an example, a conversational style of writing is used in writing articles for the RNJ Corner. Some of you might want to take the next step of writing scholarly articles. You have a great quality improvement project that changed practice in your facility; however, you don't know how to turn it into an article.

The impact of effective discharge training on our patient's quality of life.

Post-surgical care plays an important role in the success rate of heart surgery and it improves patients' quality of life. A recent Rehabilitation Nursing Journal study details how a better quality of post-operative care will increase the success rate of cardiac surgery and can help prevent any further complications.

If you are an ARN member or a Rehabilitation Nursing Journal (RNJ) subscriber, you should soon receive your May/June 2021 issue in the mail. Check out a preview of three great articles that will be gracing the pages of this issue, or visit the journal online to read the full issue.

Each submitted manuscript to RNJ is processed through iThenticate, a plagiarism detection software. As the editor, I receive the manuscript as well as a percentage score from iThenticate (1-100%).iThenticate calls the score and accompanying phrases a 'similarity report'. The software compares the submitted manuscript with a database of web pages - 70 billion active and archived ones; works from scholarly publishers representing every discipline from online and offline content - 90 million (including PubMed/Medline, EBSCOhost, and a host of others); newspapers magazines, encyclopedias, periodicals and books – 170 million; and 300,000 theses and dissertations that are available through ProQuest. The result (percentage) measures to what extent the submitted manuscript matches writing from previously existing sources. The software then highlights the phrases that match the text in an existing source and provides links to those sources. iThenticate and Turnitin are part of a parent company called iParadigm. Turnitin is similar to iThenticate in that it searches the same sources, but in addition, searches 1 billion student papers.

Does multiple sclerosis and its symptoms impact your patient's risk of loneliness? The Rehabilitation Nursing Journal article, "Loneliness in Multiple Sclerosis: Possible Antecedents and Correlates," discusses the relationship between multiple sclerosis (MS) and loneliness. The article, which was written by Drs. Balto, Pilutti, and Motl, is centered around a study that uses the Perlman and Paplau's social psychology theory of loneliness and the UCLA loneliness scale to examine and compare the extent of loneliness between adults with MS and healthy adults.

Learning to write an abstract is a skill that will help you disseminate scholarly work through publication, a poster, or conference presentation. An abstract is a summary of a research study, quality improvement (QI) or evidence-based practice (EBP) project, or body of work. The abstract is as important as the article itself since it is often the first part of the article read. It allows the reader to determine if they want to read the entire article. The abstract should be concise (typically 150-250 words) but detailed enough to stand on its own. Abstracts are written after the article is complete and should be written in the past tense since you are reporting on what has already been completed. Below are headings typically found in abstracts:

The Rehabilitation Nursing Journal (RNJ) contains educational content that focuses on contemporary rehabilitation nursing practice across the continuum of care and the lifespan. The journal is published every other month and provides opportunities for professional development, as well as a forum for the dissemination of information pertinent to practice, education, research, and administration. RNJ strives to provide a journal that disseminates timely information and new trends in practice each issue.

If you are an ARN member or a Rehabilitation Nursing Journal (RNJ) subscriber, you should soon receive your March/April 2021 issue in the mail. Check out a preview of three great articles that will be gracing the pages of this issue, or visit the journal online to read the full issue.

If you are an ARN member or a Rehabilitation Nursing Journal (RNJ) subscriber, you should soon receive your January/February 2021 issue in the mail. Check out a preview of three great articles that will be gracing the pages of this issue, or visit the journal online to read the full issue.

In her first President's Message of 2021, Dr. Patricia Quigley calls on rehabilitation nurses to fill in gaps within existing COVID-19 research literature by publishing their stories, and, in doing so, assert the vital role of rehabilitation nurses in the care of COVID patients, their families, and their caregivers.

The Rehabilitation Nursing Journal (RNJ) contains educational content that focuses on contemporary rehabilitation nursing practice across the continuum of care and the lifespan. The journal is published every other month and provides opportunities for professional development, as well as a forum for the dissemination of information pertinent to practice, education, research, and administration. RNJ editors strive to provide a journal that disseminates timely information and new trends in practice each issue.

The Rehabilitation Nursing Journal (RNJ) contains educational content that focuses on contemporary rehabilitation nursing practice across the continuum of care and the lifespan. The journal is published every other month and provides opportunities for professional development, as well as a forum for the dissemination of information pertinent to practice, education, research, and administration. RNJ editors strive to provide a journal that disseminates timely information and new trends in practice each issue.

 In this issue of RNJ Corner, RNJ Editorial Board Member, Pamala D. Larsen, PhD MS RN, provides tips for honing in on your manuscript submission process—starting with the planning.

Research published in Rehabilitation Nursing Journal makes the case for incorporating cancer rehabilitation as part of cancer survivorship care 

The number of cancer patients and survivors is rising worldwide. An American Cancer Society 2019–2021 report on cancer treatment and survivorship estimates that the U.S. population of cancer survivors will increase to more than 22.1 million by 2030 due to the growth and age of the population alone.

Last month Catherine Alfano, PhD, vice president of cancer care management and research at Northwell Health Cancer Institute and published Rehabilitation Nursing Journal (RNJ) author, wrote an op-ed in Newsday titled "Doing right by cancer patients." In the piece, Dr. Alfano discusses the growing need for the medical community to focus energy and resources on caring for cancer patients and survivors. "It's time to take a broader view of cancer care. Treatment is not just about vanquishing the disease; it's also about keeping people healthy and feeling as good as possible for the rest of their lives," writes Dr. Alfano.

The Rehabilitation Nursing Journal (RNJ) contains educational content that focuses on contemporary rehabilitation nursing practice across the continuum of care and the lifespan. The journal is published every other month and provides opportunities for professional development, as well as a forum for the dissemination of information pertinent to practice, education, research, and administration. RNJ editors strive to provide a journal that disseminates timely information and new trends in practice each issue.

In this issue of RNJ Corner, RNJ Editorial Board Member, Leslie Neal-Boylan, PhD APRN CRRN FAAN, provides tips for honing in on your manuscript submission process—starting with the planning.