Write for Us, Right for You

In many parts of the country, spring is finally emerging from the long, hard, cold winter. In almost every culture, spring is associated with rebirth, the return of longer daylight hours, growth, and new life. Like seeds planted in the fall, many of the ideas we at Federal Practitioner sowed in 2016 are now blossoming—our new Historic Profiles and Mental Health Care Practice columns, among others. Just as many of us are engaging in spring cleaning in our homes and yards and opening windows to let in the warmth and the breezes, we at the journal are making room for inspiration and illumination—yours.

Our internal reorganization has enabled us to focus on what we enjoy most—publishing your work. We invite each of you to consider submitting a manuscript and encouraging your colleagues to do so. Almost every health care professional at some time in his or her career has thought of a study to write, read an article they wished they had written, or reviewed a topic they thought suitable for publication. Well, it is time to dust off those ideas and pull them out of the drawer or computer file, just like getting out the warm weather clothing.

In order to reflect the positive trend in federal health care toward multi- and interdisciplinary teams and practice, we welcome submissions from all our clinical constituents, including physicians, surgeons, chaplains, nurses, clinical pharmacists, advanced practice nurses, psychologists, physician assistants, administrators, allied health professionals, and any and all that my old brain cannot recall.

There is nothing like the feeling of seeing your work published in print or on the Internet for the first time in an esteemed journal. If you are a teacher or mentor, think about the gift of inviting a trainee or junior colleague to coauthor an article. This collaboration can be a wonderful shared creative endeavor for educators and their students.

If you have a good idea but are concerned that your writing may be too rough, we invite you to take a leap of faith. Although as a peer-reviewed journal we cannot guarantee acceptance of any manuscript, we can assure you that our editorial staff has smoothed more than a few bumps in our authors’ literary endeavors.

Federal Practitioner is a peer-reviewed journal that has a wide audience among federal health care professionals in the DoD, VA, and PHS. We at the journal are working to become indexed in PubMed, which will provide potential authors with an even wider and more prestigious exposure for their work. We invite you to visit our website and review this print journal to get an idea—if you don’t already have one—of the types of articles we publish. To jump-start your motivation, here is a brief description of the many types of articles we accept.

Feature Articles

Feature articles may be original research or comprehensive summaries of a clinically related topic. The possibilities are as endless as federal practice and could cover medications, other types of interventions (including psychosocial treatments), and reviews of diagnoses.

Original Research

We welcome empirical studies of completed research both biomedical and biobehavioral. More experienced and senior researchers might consider that publication in Federal Practitioner potentially can demonstrate their commitment to conducting research that benefits the members of the armed forces, public services, and veterans, to government funding agencies, increasingly a requirement for grants from those institutions. And for junior or new researchers, we offer a new option to publish pilot studies for research that is just getting launched or is on a smaller scale.

Case Reports

What health care professional has not had a case so memorable that he or she cannot forget it, or a patient encounter that made a lasting impression, or one in which they gained valuable medical knowledge or human wisdom? Ever thought of writing it up for your peers to learn from as well? Submit a case to Federal Practitioner and share your clinical pearls with your colleagues. The authoring process also gives you a chance to review the latest clinical literature on a diagnosis or treatment you wanted to know more about.

Program Profiles

This section of the journal reflects the unparalleled scope and resources of federal health care. Whether it is a national initiative or a local experiment, we want to know and let others read about the beneficial work that you are doing to care for service members, veterans, and the public. Submissions can be of innovative clinical or research projects or programs.

Guest Editorials

While usually members of the Editorial Advisory Association author guest editorials, we are pleased to consider high-quality, thought provoking editorials on themes of health care policy, organization, care delivery, ethics, and professionalism, among others.

Most of us have made the painful adjustment to daylight savings time. Use those extra hours of daylight to stimulate your creative brain. If writing a manuscript does not fit in to your busy schedule right now, think about becoming a peer reviewer or even a member of the Editorial Advisory Association. And last but not least, we are a friendly and open editorial team that is willing to entertain an imaginative suggestion for a manuscript that is novel and vital just like spring.

The Federal Practitioner submission guidelines, accessed at http://www.fedprac.com, include the journal’s style and format. If you need more information or have questions about submitting a manuscript to the journal, e-mail me at ethicdoc@comcast.net, Editor Reid Paul at rpaul@frontlinemedcom.com,or Managing Editor Joyce Brody at jbrody@frontlinemedcom.com.