Special Issue on Asian Oncology Nursing Society Conference 2015.

Judith (Judi) Johnson

Judith (Judi) Johnson, PhD, RN, FAAN, has her own consulting company, HealthQuest that addresses living with a life threatening illness. Her main clients are companies and organizations working in oncology and stroke. She has served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Asia-Pacific Journal of Oncology Nursing (APJON) since 2014. Dr. Johnson has a diploma in nursing from Augustana Hospital in Chicago, IL, Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) from the University of Rochester, NY, Masters in Public Health Nursing, and Doctorate in Adult Education from the University of Minnesota (U of MN.). She also has a certificate in Chemical Counseling from the U of MN. and a Certificate in Oncology Nursing from the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, England. Dr. Johnson was elected as the Oncology Nursing Society's President in 1983-1987, to Board of Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer in 1998 and 2004 and appointed to the International Society of Nurses in Cancer Care (ISNCC) Board in 1988 and again in 1999.

The American Cancer Society (ACS) adopted Dr. Johnson's PhD thesis, I Can Cope education course, in 1980. American nurses quickly took up the course for their cancer patients followed by implementation globally. Research to adapt I Can Cope to the Swedish population was carried out in Lund, Sweden in 1987. Dr. Johnson also launched a PhD program at Hokkaido University of Health Sciences in Sapporo Japan and held a faculty position there from 1999 to 2004. She has received numerous awards including being appointed a Fulbright scholar. This lead to patient education (PE) projects at Tianjin, University and Cancer Center in China and Daystar University in Nairobi, Kenya. The ONS, ACS, and ISNCC awarded Judi their Distinguished Service Awards. She has obtained more than 20 grants, mainly to research studies in PE. Over 125 articles, book chapters and AV productions are to her credit long with having co-authored 5 books.

This issue of the Asia-Pacific Journal of Oncology Nursing (APJON) is a special issue that provides some of the highlights of the November Asian Oncology Nursing Society (AONS) conference held in Seoul, Korea in November, 2015. AONS's vision is that cancer patients in Asia will receive best care from cancer nurses who are well prepared in providing high quality and science-based care. This second meeting of Asian nurses was guided by this vision. It was exciting to realize that a dream to create an organization for cancer nurses across Asia had come true. Participants gathered to learn from two days of cancer topics ranging from research to clinical practice, government policies and preventive strategies. In addition there were opportunities to view nearly two hundred abstracts covering themes of quality of life, safety issues, palliative care and side effect management and to meet both old and new colleagues. There were 687 attendees with Korean nurses making up the largest number of registrants. This number comes close to doubling the number of participants at the first meeting held in Thailand. During the business meeting, a new president, Winne So from Hong Kong, was elected and appointments made for the remaining positions on the executive board. For those of you who were unable to attend the conference, this special issue of APJON offers a glimpse into some of the presentations at the conference.

The first paper in the journal offers a personal critique of the conference by one of the attendee, J. Camarillo from the Philippines. He selected a wide variety of topics on which to comment, namely quality of life, evidence based clinical practice, research, and development of professional oncology nursing. This lead to a very interesting summary of a number of the presentations from the point of view of a participant.

Presenters themselves authored the other summaries in this special issue. They cover the entire scope of oncology nursing from early prevention to evidence-based clinical practice to research across the continuum. Even the financial impact of cancer on families, which is so often forgotten, was addressed along with the how insurance plans are utilized to cover many of the costs. Author, L. Chen, defined how payments for care are covered by medical insurance in China and P. Pittayapan explained the formula for medical coverage used in Thailand. These summaries allow a reader to contrast and compare the financial assistance for cancer care in two Asian countries. Lead author, M. Achrekar from India reported on an interesting study, Introduction of Situation, Background, Recommendation (SBAR) into Nursing Practice: A Prospective Study. This research recruitedbedside nurses as the subjects. Theoutcome datasuggests that using SBR improves communication between nurses, especially at the change of shift. Studies like this offers a mode for nurses to improve care in the clinical setting regardless what country they are from. B. Bultz, from Canada, talked in his presentation about distress being important enough to be called the sixth vital sign. His message to the audience was that nurses who are providing quality care should be assessing for distress as a daily practice.

An article on complementary therapies (CT) authored by K. Onishi of Japan is an addition to the Oct.-Dec. 2015 journal that has a special section on Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Cancer Care. The research in this current article expands on the article in the previous journal that reported using Qigong for sleep issues.[1] This time the article describes a treatment group of anxious patients receiving a number of CTs to treat their anxiety while a control group of equally anxious patients did not receive any interventions for their anxiety. Both studies address symptom management with the first being about sleep and second study about anxiety. Their findings need now to be applied more broadly in the clinical setting.

In addition to the AONS meeting the journal invited all the corresponding editors to an informational meeting on the status of the journal following its first full year of publishing. Discussions were held regarding plans for 2016 and beyond (Figure 1 and Figure 2).

Figure 1

Fifteen editorial members attended the APJON editors meeting

Figure 2

APJON Editors Meeting in Seoul, Korea on November 19th, 2015, (a) Dr. Shiow-Ching Shun; (b) Free discussions; (c) Prof. Chua Gek Phin; (d) Prof. Yong-Yi Chen (left) and Prof. Emiko Endo (right); (e) The journal booth; (f) Dr. Qi Wang and Prof. Patsy Yates; (g) Dr. Qi Wang and Prof. Greta Cummings; (h) The journal booth

AONS holds its meetings in November every two years. The Chinese Cancer Nurses will host the third biannual meeting in Beijing in 2017. I hope to see you there.