Results from a recent reader survey keep RT Magazine on top.
By Paige Smith
A few months ago, RT Magazine conducted an online editorial reader survey, which helped our staff to create a top-notch editorial calendar for 2003. The results, which came from more than 800 respondents, are now in.
Some of the categories you found to be most useful are case studies, critical respiratory care, diagnosis, and new medical findings. In order to meet those requests, we plan to fill the 2003 editorial calendar with such subjects as diagnosing cystic fibrosis, lung cancer, and tuberculosis, along with the latest treatment modalities for these diseases.
Almost half of the respondents found news to be very relevant and RT plans to accommodate this request by publishing the latest news on respiratory care. One potential news item might include the “Asian Brown Cloud” that is hovering over South Asia and has scientists concerned that it could kill millions of people in the region and pose a global threat. The report calculated that 80% of the cloud is a man-made cocktail of aerosols, ash, soot, and other particles. A large part of the aerosol cloud comes from inefficient cookers where fuels such as cow dung and kerosene are used to prepare food in many parts of Asia. In the biggest study of the phenomenon, 200 scientists warned that the cloud, which is estimated to be two miles thick, is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths a year from respiratory disease. The haze lies over the entire Indian subcontinent from Sri Lanka to Afghanistan and has led to erratic weather causing flooding in Bangladesh, Nepal, and northeastern India, but drought in Pakistan and northwestern India.
In addition to providing more news, we will continue to attend such pertinent meetings as the American Association for Respiratory Care (AARC), which will be held on October 5-8. The keynote speaker is Linda Peeno, MD, who will be speaking on yet another topic RT’s readers deemed important: managed care. She will address the ethical issues concerning managed care, which fall into four major categories including professional, medical, business, and social.
RT will be in booth #425, so please stop by and say hello. Obviously, your comments are welcome.
Other seminars the RT team will be attending include demands on health care delivery in the intensive care unit, asthma disease management, and improving patient-ventilator synchrony, which will enable us to keep up-to-date on investigators’ latest findings concerning respiratory care.
In the next issue of RT, we will include a year in review that will cover the major events that occurred in respiratory care and what experts are predicting for 2003.
As 87% of you rated RT Magazine as relevant to very relevant, I would like to personally thank all of those who responded and assure you that the RT team will make the editorial lineup for 2003 a winner.
RT
Paige Smith is the former editor of RT. For more information, contact [email protected].
