JEPM: A Courageous Editorial Team in Service of SEA!

“I’ve been frankly confused by this fascination that everybody has with Netflix…Netflix doesn’t really have or do anything that we can’t or don’t already do ourselves.” We all know by now the story of how Netflix used ultra-quick mail-order DVD rentals to dominate its chief rival, Blockbuster, in the mid-2000s. And Netflix has gone on to reinvent itself several times over, beyond Jim Keyes’ famous last words as the CEO of Blockbuster. In 2007, Netflix launched a streaming video services that is now industry standard. In 2013, Netflix took a huge gamble into original content with House of Cards. Although business “reinvention” stories like these often portray the CEO as the “lone hero”, the truth is that these considerable leaps by Netflix required courageous teamwork. At JEPM, we doubtlessly have a courageous editorial team in service of the SEA.

Consider these recent “Big I” innovations at our twenty-year-old journal: Journal of Education in Perioperative Medicine (JEPM) was indexed on PubMed Central in 2016. We launched on the Scholastica journal submission platform the following year and saw a dramatic increase in the number of submissions. Our first ever editorial is coming in the next issue. We are evaluating a new journal submission platform and are hiring a consultant to give recommendations for the future of the journal. Operationally, we have an all-star associate editor team that includes Swapna Chaudhuri, MD, PhD; Timothy R. Long, MD; Annette Mizuguchi, MD, PhD, MMSc, FASE; Srijaya K. Reddy, MD, MBA; Deborah A. Schwengel, MD, Med; and Karen J. Souter, MB, BS, FRCA. New associate editors Phillip S. Adams, DO and Lara Zisblatt, EdD, MA, PMME were recently brought on board to expand our operational capacity even further. These and other “Little i” innovations have allowed us to achieve operational numbers that just a year or two ago seemed implausible. Of 52 total submissions in the year leading up to our spring SEA meeting, 11 have been accepted for publication, 17 rejected, and 24 remain in progress. Our average time to decision remains low at 87 days.

In addition to the increasing number of submissions, the quality of submitted manuscripts has improved in recent years. An upcoming article by Kim and colleagues, “Comparison of Case-based Learning to Simulation-based Learning for Teaching Malignant Hyperthermia Concepts to Anesthesiology Residents,” demonstrates the high-quality work the journal attracts and is set to be published in late 2019. With the explosion of simulation-based learning over the last two decades, some have questioned whether the outcomes justify the costs. Case-based learning, on the other hand, requires much lower investment of resources. Kim et al found that learning and retention by anesthesiology residents in a case-based learning group are non-inferior compared with a simulation-based learning group for management of malignant hyperthermia patients. The authors acknowledge that simulation-based learning is likely more effective for certain topics and skills within the practice of anesthesiology.

Rest assured that the JEPM editorial team has every intention of making the next 20 years even more exciting than the first. We appreciate our members’ service of reviewing manuscripts this past year, and we encourage everyone to consider JEPM as the premier journal for publishing your perioperative educational research!