Community Care has buried the hatchet and teamed up with its long standing rival Nursing Standard to produce a joint issue.
The move is designed to coincide with Government plans for the public sector, which involve breaking down the barriers between health and social care workers.
Community Care and Nursing Standard have the same cover, the editors have written a joint leader and there are a number of similar features inside including the lead news story.
The magazines have also commissioned a joint survey on the issue of health and social care staff working more closely together following the Government’s reform plans.
Community Care editor Polly Neate said: “Our readers and Nursing Standard readers are becoming closer and closer. We thought there was much more to be gained by each of us by having the opportunity to reach the readership of the other, rather than just being competitive. This is a first for us and for Nursing Standard and it has gone really well.”
Neate said the collaboration had enabled the magazines to produce strong research that was relevant to both readerships.
Community Care’s assistant editor Janet Snell came up with the original idea and Neate said she could see further potential for tie-ups in the future.
Neate said: “Definitely. We want to take a much more open approach. Workers in the public sector are being encouraged to work together and in that sense I think they like to see us mirroring the type of things they are being forced to do and burying the hatchet.
“We’d be really interested in hearing from other public sector magazines. I am not trying to deny that there are competitive issues but there is a hell of a lot to be gained from the way in which the public sector is changing by working together.”
The Nursing Standard is published by the Royal College of Nursing and Community Care is published by Reed Business Information.
By Ruth Addicott
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