| HOME | HELP | FEEDBACK | SUBSCRIPTIONS | ARCHIVE | SEARCH | TABLE OF CONTENTS |
|
|
|
|||||||
|
|||||||||
Editorials |
rebeccacraik{at}apta.org
To walk into the Physical Therapy editorial board meeting on January 30, 2005, and see someone sitting at the head of the table was a huge relief for those of us serving on the board. To have Alan Jette be that person was incredible! This is a very busy man who had stepped down from his position as dean of Sargent College at Boston University—he wanted to devote more time to his funded research institute—only to agree to oversee Physical Therapy for a year. He did so out of a sense of professional obligation and love for an ailing friend.
Many of you have not met Alan, but you know about him through his publications. He has written more than 100 refereed articles and has been instrumental in introducing our profession to disability models. If you have a moment, read the discussions about diagnosis that were published in our Journal in 1989, and listen to the voices of Steve Rose1,2 and Alan3 on this topic. The opinions expressed in the May 1994 issue on disability—including Andrew Guccione4 on the Nagi Model and Alan5 on the World Health Organization (WHO) model—are relevant today as we discuss the paradigm shift from disability to function in the WHO International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF).6 It is no surprise that Alan is highly regarded in several circles beyond our own, including the National Institutes of Health, the American Geriatrics Society, and the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine.
Alan viewed the editorial board, the authors, and the Journal itself through a different lens, one that had been shaped by his research expertise. As a result, he introduced another dimension to our thinking. In my opinion, it was inappropriate to label Alan as acting editor-in-chief—he was THE editor-in-chief for 14 months. The term "acting" suggests that a Band-Aid is being applied or that goals or workloads are only maintained until the "real" person arrives. Alan was the real person, and this was clear at his first meeting with the editorial board. He looked great (dark suit, white shirt, nicely coiffed); the agenda was carefully conceived in advance, and we followed it; he praised our work, and then... he looked us each in the eye and challenged us!
He wanted to know why we were not personally publishing more of our own work in the Journal; he wanted us to encourage authors to publish in the Journal; he told us that we had to be timely with our Journal work... he meant it... and we did it! As our managing editor, Jan Reynolds, stated in her January note, the results were an increased number of submissions, decreased time from author submission to publication, and an increased number of articles published per month.
But Alan did more than change the numbers. He expanded the diversity of content. I heard from several enthusiastic colleagues who found that all of the articles were appealing, that the author's voice was allowed to speak to us in each article, and that Alan's Editor's Notes raised issues that we, as a profession, must address. Editorial topics included fostering scientific integrity, ensuring an adequate number of physical therapists with PhDs for the future, working with rehabilitation-related disciplines to build research capacity, and disseminating new information effectively.
The underlying theme of those editorials and his other initiatives is Alan's passion to promote and develop evidence through collaboration to ensure that the patient's goals are met using best practice. Note that the patient outcome—not the physical therapist outcome'is Alan's focus.
Alan did not assume the editorship like Carl Sandburg's fog, coming in on little cat's feet. Nor did he come in, Lancelot-like, on a white horse, clad in armor to save us. Carl Sagan said the following about science: "There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That's perfectly all right; they're the aperture to finding out what's right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny."7 During the time that Alan shared with us, he urged us to use Sagan's quote as our mantra'substituting "physical therapist practice" for "science." Thank you, Alan, for all of your hard work, for the kick in the butt, and for sharing your dreams.
And to our readers: thank you for making this journey with us. I am honored to be the next editor in chief. The accomplishments of Alan and Editor in Chief Emeritus Jules Rothstein are sufficiently daunting as I contemplate my role. Many of you want to know what I plan to do! I certainly want to continue with Alan's initiatives and... I also want to listen for a while.
There is only one thing that I know for certain. I want the Journal to help diminish the gaps'the gap in communication among physical therapists at all levels and particularly among basic, applied, and clinical scientists; the gap between science and practice; the gap between evidence and practice.
 | Footnotes |
|---|
References
Related Article
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| HOME | HELP | FEEDBACK | SUBSCRIPTIONS | ARCHIVE | SEARCH | TABLE OF CONTENTS |
