Spotlight on the first issue of NICC for 2023.

Abstract

Welcome to the first issue of 2023! At Nursing in Critical Care, we have an exciting year ahead with plans for two themed issues later in the year: one focused on rehabilitation in and after critical care and another around leadership and management of intensive care units (ICUs). This free to access issue includes 17 interesting papers: two guest editorials, two quality improvement/service evaluation papers, 11 empirical research papers, and two reviews, including one in the recently launched short manuscript categories. These papers reinforce the Journal's commitment to promoting critical care across the lifespan, with papers that specifically focus on the care of critically ill neonates, children, adults, and older adults, and a guest editorial discussing device-related pressure injuries across the critical care lifespan.1 The other guest editorial,2 penned by the Journal's social media associate editor, highlights the value of infographics in visually summarizing and disseminating the research findings to a wider audience and facilitating their implementation into practice. The service evaluation papers showcase the application of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's (IHI)3 Quality Improvement (QI) methodology to drive improvements in lung-protective ventilation,4 and reduce failure to rescue rates in a paediatric in-patient setting.5 Vetcho and colleagues6 report on a qualitative study exploring parents' and healthcare professionals' perceptions of family-centred care in a neonatal intensive care unit in Thailand, and, at the other end of the lifespan spectrum, Occhiali et al.7 investigated the risk factors associated with poor outcomes in older adults admitted to surgical intensive care units in France. Another important theme explored in this issue is safety in critical care settings, with studies about the relationship between surgical ICU nurses' safety culture and adverse events,8 the consequences of unplanned extubation,9 the physical assessment skills practised by critical care nurses,10 and ICU nurses' perceptions and practices related to alarms.11 We also shed light on palliative and end-of-life care in critical care settings through studies conducted in China12 and Italy,13 respectively. The psychosocial wellbeing of patients and critical care professionals also features prominently in this issue. Jenkins et al.14 examined the psychological impact of the Novichok poisoning incident in March 2018 on the staff who were directly involved and drew parallels with the subsequent COVID-19 pandemic. Gonçalves and colleagues15 explored the experiences of illness and recovery from severe COVID-19 from the perspective of survivors, their relatives, and professionals involved in their care. Finally, Jarden et al.16 report on a prototype analysis of the general well-being of ICU nurses. This issue features two different types of review papers. Ye et al. conducted a systematic review with network meta-analysis comparing the effectiveness of different durations of pressure support ventilation and T-piece among patients being weaned from mechanical ventilation,17 whereas Littler and Tume compared bolus and continuous enteral feeding among critically ill children in a short evidence-based review.18 The latter is the first example in the recently launched short manuscript categories. We hope you will enjoy reading and downloading this free to access issue and that the papers may inspire developments in your own clinical practice, research, and education.