The holiday season is well underway & here at Evidence Based Nursing (EBN) we recognise that may nurses will be working to provide care & support to people with health issues over the festive period, but hope that for many you are all having a well deserved break. This year, as in previous years, the challenges facing nursing & healthcare have often dominated the news. The weekly EBN blog has enabled the editorial team & our guest bloggers to raise a range of issue relevant to contemporary nursing practice, often responding quickly to current policy and health issues.

Below are some of the highlights & initiatives that occurred at ENB in 2017:

• In March, we had the pleasure of Dr Kate Granger (doctor, terminally ill cancer patient, founder of t #hellomynameis) hosting a twitter chat focusing on the#hellomynameis campaign. As anticipated the chat was high successful generating 2,842,612 impressions; 524 tweets; 210 participants. A summary of the chat and Storify can be found at:

http://ebn.bmj.com/content/19/3/68.full.pdf+html?sid=0b2fe014-af24-44ba-b04e-565eb1220e81 https://storify.com/josmith175/hellomynameis

Sadly, Kate passed way earlier this year.

• Our EBN Opinion series is going from strength to strength, which summarises out Twitter chats. The latest article focuses on m
  eeting the needs of families: facilitating access to credible healthcare information:

http://ebn.bmj.com/content/20/1/2.short?g=w_ebn_current_ta

• October was the launch of EBN Perspectives which brings together key issues from the commentaries in one of our nursing topic themes, the first article summarised commentaries on child health issues:

http://ebn.bmj.com/content/19/4/107.extract

With the latest focusing on advanced care planning & palliative care:
http://ebn.bmj.com/content/20/1/5.short?g=w_ebn_current_tab

• Our Research Made Simple series continues to be popular offering a concise summary of key issues in research methods & their practical application; the next article focuses on the ethical context of nursing research:

http://ebn.bmj.com/content/20/1/7.short?g=w_ebn_current_tab

• This year we presented at two important conferences; the International Academy of Nursing Editors (INANE), conference in August & the Royal College of Nursing International Centenary Conference in November both presentations focused on the ways social media activities can be used in nursing and nursing journals to promote evidence based practice.

We are looking forward to restarting our Twitter chats in January, beginning with

‘Loosing the child’s voice’ and ‘the captive mother’- an inevitable legacy of family-centred care? 4^th January 2017, 8-9pm UK time

Learning technology in nurse education 18^th January 2017, 8-9pm UK time