A New Home for Hopkins Nurse
A joint interview with Martha Hill and Karen Haller, as told by Stephanie Shapiro
Since 1988, nurses, nurse managers, administrators and prospective staff nurses have relied on Hopkins Nurse, a semi-annual, six-page newsletter produced by The Johns Hopkins Hospital, for updates on the profession as well as colleagues’ accomplishments, accolades, and research findings. Beginning with this issue of Johns Hopkins Nursing, the School of Nursing and alumni magazine, Hopkins Nurse has a new home in these pages. The decision to replace the newsletter with a new section in this magazine exemplifies the flourishing partnership between the school and hospital department of nursing, says Karen Haller, PhD, RN, FAAN, vice president for nursing and patient care services at The Johns Hopkins Hospital.
The editorial alliance “reflects the academic nursing center we’ve created here, a marriage of the school and the hospital,” says Haller. “The re-launch of Hopkins Nurse in the school magazine as a combined publication recognizes and honors that.”
The joint project also fortifies the profile of Hopkins Nursing around the world, says School of Nursing Dean Martha N. Hill, PhD, RN, FAAN. Noting that the Johns Hopkins brand already commands international regard, she says, “We want nursing to be visible and recognized.”
For Cheryl Meguid, MSN, RN, ACNP, a nurse practitioner in the JHH department of surgery and graduate student at the School of Nursing, Hopkins Nurse is a source of important updates on nursing advances. She views the newsletter’s incorporation into Johns Hopkins Nursing as a boon for students. “Since we live in an evidenced-based practice world here at Hopkins, this is a nice way for students and nurses to read about new research and practices,” says Meguid. “I think it will also show the students ‘reality’ after they graduate.”
The mission of Hopkins Nurse has not changed, Haller says, and remains “to communicate what nursing here is about and to recognize our stars. We also use it on our website for recruit-ment and retention.”
“We use it for everything,” Hill says of the magazine. “That’s why we want it to be diverse in its coverage of students, faculty, staff, and our partners in the hospital and health system.” At the same time, the magazine serves to “put forward the case for support in forms that people are familiar with and recognize.”
Merging the two publications also brings the 120-year-old alliance of Hopkins nursing practice and education full circle. The nursing school’s future growth is contingent on strengthening and reinforcing the alliance, an objective embodied by incorporating Hopkins Nurse into the magazine, Hill says. “This partnership has been a vision that we wanted to bring forward.”
Addressing Hill, Haller notes that the newly configured publication marks one departure from Johns Hopkins Nursing. “Going forward, some people featured in here won’t be your students, but they might become them as they seek another degree.”
Or as nurses increasingly travel between the hospital and the School of Nursing to practice, learn, and teach, the magazine’s new readers “may become your faculty.”
In any case, evidence-based proof of the magazine’s success exists around the country-in the form of professional awards and imitation by sister magazines. Will a flurry of new sections in nursing school magazines devoted to hospital nursing soon follow?
Martha N. Hill, PhD, RN, FAAN, ’64
Dean
Professor of Nursing, Medicine and Public Health