David Schmidt1, Journal Manager
Welcome to Volume 2 of Health Education in Practice: Journal of Research for Professional Learning (HEPJ). As the journal enters its second year, we look to the future of health education, focusing on equipping our health workers for the future challenges facing the health workforce.
The first paper in our Research and Evaluation stream, ' Education pathways, mentoring and future intentions of nurse and midwifery consultant in a NSW health district ', highlights the future skill development requirements of the clinical nurse and midwifery consultant workforce. With an eye on career development and succession planning, Edgar et al. reveal a desire for improved clinical skills and leadership over other domains of practice.
Two growing issues within Australian society are an emerging population living with chronic pain and mental health issues. Health professionals deliver services to people with these long-term conditions and may experience these issues themselves. Recent changes at the federal level to pain medication availability have shifted the focus of health services to non-pharmaceutical approaches to chronic pain. With chronic pain increasing in the Australian community, White et al.'s educational pilot demonstrates an important strategy in upskilling primary healthcare workers to provide evidence-based care to this client group. The change of attitudes in response to a multifaceted training package shows an encouraging shift in perceptions towards non-pharmaceutical approaches for people living with chronic pain. This attitudinal shift is critical to ensure improved service to a group that can often feel marginalised through interactions with health services.
Our third paper by Holmes et al., 'Wellness in allied health students: the case for change', explores implementing a wellness program for young allied health professionals to combat the rise in mental health issues and stress. A recognition of the increased pressures of clinical placements on students prompted this pilot program. The program demonstrated a willingness and ability for allied health students to incorporate wellness strategies to manage their mental health. These developments in self-care strategies will be an important protective mechanism as these students become graduates working within the health system.
Since the last issue, we also have bid farewell to the journal's founding editor-in-chief, Dr Suzana Sukovic. We thank Suzana for all her work in establishing the journal, which has a growing audience and has experienced over 60 per cent growth in terms of website activity and article reads in the first half of this year alone.
Other important activity related to the journal include a refresh of the HEPJ website and interface. During this issue, HEPJ has welcomed a new responsive web design that incorporates a more accessible experience for readers and users. Articles are now being published in HTML once approved for publication, expediting access to articles as part of our commitment to a rolling publication model. Digital object identifiers have now been integrated into HEPJ articles and will be included with published articles from this issue onwards, bringing the journal into line with other online publishers and improving the ability for authors to cite their work in the journal. Social media plugins have been embedded in articles, increasing the ease of sharing and promotion of articles. HEPJ editorial policies are now available online in full. Policies, author guidelines for submission and instructions for reviewers are now available on the HEPJ website. We trust this assists potential authors in submitting to the journal.
HEPJ is now also indexed in Trove and Google Scholar. With the increased reach provided as a result of this indexing, we hope to see continued growth of the journal's reach and readership.
As the journal's new manager, I am proud to work with our editorial assistant Jamaica Eisner to bring you this issue. Our audience is growing, as is our network of reviewers, under the guidance of our editorial board. We look forward to continued growth for this journal and the appointment of a new editor in the near future.
1 For correspondence: David Schmidt, Journal Manager. Health Education & Training Institute (HETI), Locked Bag 5022, Gladesville NSW 1675, Australia
Email: [email protected]