title: Editorial.
abstract: Getting nurses to speak up about their work and profession has always been a challenge. Some argue it is to do with nursing being a female profession. Others believe it is due to nurses working in and adopting a culture that discourages 'speaking up'. A third school of thought is that nursing is so simple that there is nothing special to say about it. It is no consolation to know that it is a global problem; nurses all over the world seem to have difficulty explaining why what they do is so important.