Abstract
Dear Colleagues and Friends:
It is with immense gratitude and humility that I write to you as the newly installed Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Palliative Medicine. As someone in practice for over a decade now, I still marvel that we are close enough to our field's founding that many of our earliest leaders remain engaged in clinical practice, in regional, national, and international program leadership, and as members of JPM's Editorial Board. I view the chance to build on the work of JPM's Founding Editor David Weissman, MD, and now Editor Emeritus Charles von Gunten, MD, PhD, as an incredible honor and a great responsibility. Dr. von Gunten in his letter last month spoke of an upcoming generational change for JPM and our field. JPM's past stands as the foundation on which everything else has been and will be built and deserves reverence and respect. Thanks to the ongoing teaching and mentorship our field's founders, the next generation is poised and ready to take up this challenge.
JPM as a journal today is strong. Thanks to the last two decades of leadership by Dr. von Gunten and Lisa Pelzek-Braun, JPM's Managing Editor since the journal's founding 26 years ago, JPM stands as our field's International Journal for Practicing Clinicians and Educators. Thoughtfully pursued partnerships with hospice and palliative care societies from around the globe have made JPM an inclusive home for research and clinical innovations from across Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, and the Americas. JPM has worked hard to share and celebrate innovations and growth from around the world, with synthesized just-in-time education available for those new to hospice and palliative care. JPM's presence is strong, with a well-established role globally and a strong brand as the journal that offers readers clinically applicable information month after month.
I am excited for us to move forward together. Gone are the days of an academic journal's place solely in the pile of reading to be “gotten to” one day soon. Practice-changing articles become available months before they land in your library or in your hand. Gone also are the just once-yearly opportunities for our Editorial Board to meet some place in North America. We are all just a Zoom link away. I am excited to have the opportunity to partner with many of you as we strengthen and hone JPM's place as our field's international clinical journal for the future.
The next few years will be a time of thoughtful yet rapid change, both in academic publishing and in our field more generally. I hope to leverage COVID-induced skills in virtual collaboration to further engage our Editorial Board and the leadership of our global PalCare and Hospice Society partners. This collective and energizing work will focus on understanding the current and future needs of our readers and our field as we transition from a paper “journal-in-the-hand” experience to one that includes online multimedia and multichannel engagement opportunities.
We have received a commitment from JPM's publisher to support our journal as a learning laboratory, a place where together we can innovate ways to make JPM even more relevant, even more engaging, and even more of the global clinicians' go-to resource for growth than it is today. We get to be at the tip of the proverbial spear of idea generation. Some innovations will work; some will not. As scientists and clinicians, we will celebrate both our successes and our failures as each will help to move JPM and hospice and palliative care forward.
Over the next few months, we will be actively and enthusiastically soliciting advice from Hospice and Palliative Care leaders and the broader JPM readership around the world. Think big. Dream a bit. What can JPM do for you and what can we do together? Please share your ideas, ranging from the concrete to the aspirational, to improve JPM with Lisa and me at:
I cannot be more excited to build on JPM's past successes and look forward to growing our journal and our field together.