Serving leadership in knowledge communication

EDITORIAL

Serving leadership in knowledge communication

Isabel Amélia Costa Mendes

Full Professor, Editor of Latin American Journal of Nursing of Ribeirão Preto of the University of São Paulo at Ribeirão Preto College of Nursing - WHO Collaborating Centre for Nursing Research Development, e-mail: [e-mail]

The final decades of the XX^th century already forecasted the essential characteristic of the current millennium: the search for meaning and authenticity. This new ethic presupposed different expressions: a cause, a purpose, a search for identity, dignity and quality of life. It is supported by the intense search for a cause and, at the same time, by the understanding that, in order to be truly healthy and noble, the cause must be a purpose that extrapolates itself.

In our times, the ethical dimension considers that a person’s goal in this life is to live so as to contribute to the offering of conditions to allow people from upcoming generations to live better. It is an investment that, in order to continue, expects some profitability in the long term but, mainly, it is an investment to help others... it is the act of generously investing in the creation, formation, understanding, construction of the other...

Believing in what we do makes us committed to people’s goodness and, consequently, makes us penetrate their lives to the extent that they allow this.

Work in this trajectory is hard and challenging, but also profoundly rewarding and stimulating, as the values used here are loaded with sensitivity and careful attention.

People whose lives are directed at objectives and goals whose importance they acknowledge are seeking completeness and, consequently, possess and demonstrate true joy.

The ideas exposed here are compatible with the premises of serving leadership, according to which respect, welcoming, commitment and care with people are values inherent in a great leader whose mission is to service.

The Latin American Journal of Nursing has attempted to follow the guidelines of this ethic which, actually, is not new, but needs to be and is being recovered. Thus, the people involved in this cause – including their stakeholders - have dedicated themselves, joining reason and affection, to receiving and offering this knowledge communication service to our clients.

It is due to its commitment to a global clientele that this service puts down frontiers and is gradually achieving the goal of publishing its entire contents in three languages, guaranteeing quality and the accessibility of the methodology and the SciELO base.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  13 Nov 2006
• Date of issue
  Oct 2006