Hospital medicine's evolution—The next step

You hold in your hands the inaugural issue of the Journal of Hospital Medicine (JHM). Our goal is for JHM to become the premier forum for peer-reviewed research articles and evidencebased reviews in the specialty of hospital medicine. Yes, the specialty of hospital medicine. This official publication of the Society of Hospital Medicine signifies another step forward in the evolution of this specialty. With the publication of JHM the Society of Hospital Medicine continues its pivotal educational and leadership role in shaping the practice of hospital medicine. The Society is dedicated to promoting the highest-quality care for all hospitalized patients and excellence in hospital medicine through education, advocacy, and research. As part of the Society’s effort to improve care and standards, it is providing JHM to all members as part of their membership. We hope that our readership will grow to include individuals involved in all aspects of hospital care. Packed with the results of new studies and state-of-the-art reviews, JHM is not aimed solely at academicians and voracious readers of the medical literature. Rather, we hope that it fills a practical need to promote lifelong learning in both hospitalists and their hospital colleagues. For example, in this issue, national experts in palliative care and geriatrics summarize the pertinent literature and the important role of such care for hospitalized patients. JHM will also serve as a key venue for hospital medicine researchers to disseminate their findings and for educators to share their knowledge and techniques. Why bother to create yet another journal? Given the stacks of journals that adorn many of our desks (and some of our chairs and windowsills), do we really need another to get lost among the mail that inundates us? We believe the field of hospital medicine involves a growing body of knowledge deserving of a journal focused solely on it. Hospital medicine evolved from efforts to fill a need identified by overstretched primary care physicians in the late 1980s. Physicians like the cofounders of SHM, John Nelson in Florida and Win Whitcomb in Massachusetts, began careers in a field that today numbers more than 12,000 physicians. Labeled with the moniker “hospitalist” given us by Bob Wachter and Lee Goldman, we now make up the fastest-growing medical specialty in the United States. Yet, until now, no journal was devoted solely to this specialty. The Journal of Hospital Medicine aims to provide physicians and other health care professionals with continuing insight into the basic and clinical sciences to support informed clinical decision making in the hospital. As hospitalists increasingly take an active role in the successful delivery of bench research discoveries to the bedside and become vigorous participants in the translational and clinical research sought by the National Institutes of Health, JHM will disseminate their findings. E D I T O R I A L