By Journal Staff
Welcome to the July/August issue of the Journal and an introduction to a few adjustments we’ve made in the print and online versions.
Perhaps the most noticeable change involves taking the FYI section from the print copy and posting these time-sensitive stories on the Journal website and/or social media. You’ll now find the FYI stories under the online banner “In The News.” They will be updated as often as we put them together. We plan to give more attention to our communication centers to show the diversity of cities and countries that use the medical, fire, police, and emergency communication nurse protocol systems and we will continue to provide updates to the protocols, which every day affect millions of lives worldwide.
We’ve also expanded the online version. Some articles have additional content related to what’s in print but posted online to provide a more in-depth perspective or simply because we have more to say than the printed pages allow. For example, we often find more information than printed space allows for our Continuing Dispatch Education (CDE) articles, and with the web, we now have the ability to refer readers to the online post. We are also testing the idea of running articles detailing NAVIGATOR sessions online, rather than in the Journal, and cross-referencing articles in the the Academy’s research journal, Annals of Emergency Dispatch & Response (AEDR), to give members more of the science behind the protocol process.
While, for the most part, we will continue to publish two features in each issue, we will also occasionally drop one feature in favor of devoting more space to a topic of particular interest to our members. The multi-story stress feature, starting on page 20 is an example.
In the future, you can look forward to a greater number of stories about our centers and members. We are also looking to improve the connection between the Journal and social media and the Academy’s popular research publication, AEDR.
Some things aren’t changing.
You won’t see any changes to content that over the years has been the most widely read: continuing dispatch education, FAQs, Ask Doc, columns from experts in the field, features, Fast Facts, and the Your Space section. As always, we encourage readers to send us your suggestions, submissions, and comments to editor@emergencydispatch.org, and, when you do, include your agency information. We look forward to your comments through the forthcoming surveys that will be accessible on the web.
