A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Production of the New Core Curriculum
by Bryan O’Donnell, ARN Managing Editor
Working as the managing editor for The Specialty Practice of Rehabilitation Nursing: A Core Curriculum, eighth edition, was a very rewarding experience. Book projects are a passion of mine, specifically being able to take a massive project from the early stages to a final product that I can hold in my hands and flip through. And all the while knowing that the book I was working to publish would be helping so many people in their roles as rehabilitation nurses.
In my role as managing editor, I coordinated with ARN staff; Editor Stephanie Vaughn, PhD RN CRRN FAHA; and more than 60 volunteer authors and reviewers to create the new edition’s content, as well as keep the project on schedule.
The eighth edition of the Core Curriculum includes 25 chapters, including news chapters covering bowel and bladder management for rehabilitation nurses, cancer care and rehabilitation, disaster and mass casualty preparedness, response and recovery, and the Competency Model for Professional Rehabilitation Nursing’s application to practice. Editor Stephanie Vaughn identified these topics as needing dedicated chapters, as some of this content was parts of other chapters in previous editions. The bowel and bladder content was originally planned as part of the Physical Healthcare Patterns and Nursing Interventions chapter, but there was such an abundance of great bowel and bladder management content that Stephanie decided it needed its own chapter.
When performing the brainstorming and planning for the eighth edition of the Core Curriculum, two major changes were decided: We would aim to reduce the overall page length to make the resource more concise and enhance usability, and the book would move from using an outline style to a narrative style – also something that would help improve the user experience. In the end, both of these goals were accomplished. Even with a good deal of new additional content to the Core Curriculum, the book went from 730 pages (seventh edition) to 644 pages. This required discretion by the authors on what was the most necessary information to include.
The authors also successfully transformed the copy from using an outline format to a narrative one. This was no small task. Sometimes a piece of information in outline format that was conveyed in one bullet point may necessitate multiple sentences or even paragraphs to describe in a narrative format. The authors deserve a lot of credit for making this transformation to the copy.
Production Process Overview
The production process for the Core Curriculum had many steps and layers. Authors used manuscripts from the previous edition as a basis for their new chapter. Once first drafts were complete, I sent them to volunteer expert reviewers, who would check for clarity, identify missing content, and determine if references needed to be updated within the draft. After the review, I returned the chapters back to the authors for them to make updates based on the reviewers’ comments and create a "final" manuscript.
These manuscripts then went to Stephanie for her final review and sign-off. Approved chapters were copyedited and formatted by ARN editorial staff before heading into design. As designs were completed, I sent PDFs of the designed chapters to the authors for their review. This was the final time for authors to see their chapter before the book was printed. Concurrently with this step, ARN editorial staff performed proofs to look for any bad breaks or final typos. I keyed in all corrections from the authors and proofers and then sent final PDFs to Stephanie for her final approval.
In addition, ARN editorial staff secured permission to use all copyrighted tables and figures. Once those were completed, and the chapters approved by Stephanie, the book was sent to an indexer. This step must be done only after we are certain text will not be bumped to a different page (because this could cause inaccuracies in the index if that happened).
With the index finished, the book was sent to the printer and was shipped back to ARN headquarters shortly before ARN’s 2019 conference.
From the beginning of the project, we were shooting to have the new Core Curriculum published in time for REACH 2019, so it felt good to meet this goal. ARN conducted an onsite presale and book signing at conference. It was a great success!
I would like to thank everyone who helped in the production of the Core Curriculum. It was a pleasure to work on this project. And an extra, final kudos to all of the hardworking volunteers who spent many hours writing and reviewing copy. We could not have published this book without them!
