www.npjournal.org
65
Editorial
Marilyn W. Edmunds
PhD, NP
T
hank you all for your enthusiastic reception to this new journal. We appreci-
ate the e-mails, letters, and calls of support as you reviewed our premier
issue. We are pleased you like the format and the content relevant to the NP
role. We are also happy to acknowledge the many NPs who are sending manu-
scripts and asking to be reviewers. We are delighted to find so many well-prepared
NPs who wish to share their scholarly works with the broader community.
Our celebration, however, is tempered by the escalating horror along the Gulf
Coast that we cannot ignore. As we were going to press, floodwaters and wind
transformed parts of our nation into third-world country conditions. Individuals who
had the means to leave escaped the devastating hurricane. Those who did not
remained behind in unimaginably harsh settings. Many of these individuals are our
patients and were already the poor, homeless, and unemployed who now are suffer-
ing even more. Their chronic diseases, lack of good nutrition, and scarce resources
make their existence in this nightmare almost unbearable. Many of them will not
survive. Government programs and health care systems have never met the needs
of this group, and they will continue to suffer most because their needs are so
great. Our hearts go out to them.
One of the lingering images is the people who turned to the television cameras
and cried, “Who is going to help us? Where are they? Why doesn’t anyone come?”
But there is already some help—the help that never left. The nurses and physicians
who remained in the hospitals, who volunteered to stay on duty even when reports
of the coming storm grew more frightening. Those who even now are still on duty
in hospitals without electricity, filled with sick patients for whom there was no
evacuation. They are still on duty, doing what nurses have always done—caring for
their patients.
Our own editorial board has two nurse practitioners based in New Orleans. Both
of them have contacted us to say they are safe, although they have witnessed and
experienced frightening things. This is a life-changing event for everyone.
During hard times like these, the nurses of Louisiana, Florida, Mississippi, and
Alabama will be there—on duty, quietly serving not only in the hospitals, but also in
the families and neighborhoods where they live, giving first aid and reminding peo-
ple about hand-washing, waste disposal, boiling water, good nutrition, hydration, and
disease prevention. And nurses will be there to hold the hands of the dying and suf-
fering patients and ease their stress and panic. As we know, nurses will always be
on duty. We pay them great tribute.
1555-4155/05/$ see front matter
© Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1067/j.nurpra.2005.09.001
Tribute
to our
Editor in Chief
Marilyn W. Edmunds
Nursing Colleagues
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