I am delighted to offer an introduction to the International Practice Development Journal. This is an important new step for FoNS and one that furthers our strong commitment to spreading and sharing the knowledge and experiences of nurses and healthcare teams who strive to continually improve the care of patients. Over the last 20 years or more, FoNS has strived to achieve two interlinked aims, the advancement of nursing and the improvement of patient care. Whilst supporting nurses is at the heart of what we do, we recognise how important it is to collaborate and work in partnership with all healthcare disciplines and arguably most importantly patients and their families. Our ability to collaborate has been one of our strengths and indeed this venture would not be possible without the collaboration and support of the International Practice Development Collaborative (IPDC).

We are also especially pleased to have the expertise of Professor Jan Dewing, from Canterbury Christ Church University as Academic Editor. Professor Dewing with the IPDC and the team at FoNS is realising a shared vision for an online journal that will promote understanding about the theory and reality of practice development alongside encouraging and enabling clinical practitioners to flourish as writers and share how they are improving nursing and healthcare. I hope you will enjoy reading as I have this first issue, which offers theoretical challenge and insight to real-world practice development as well as, showing the benefit of critique and reflection.

Finally, I wish to congratulate all involved who have work tirelessly over the last few months to launch this online journal and put to the forefront of nursing and healthcare innovative activity that improves patient care.

Dickon Weir-Hughes, FoNS’ Chair of Trustees; Chief Executive and Registrar, Nursing and Midwifery Council, UK.

This article by Dickon Weir Hughes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 3.0 License.