Treating each family individually to explore the family's beliefs and values on this issue is essential in healthcare practice and nurses should tailor their own approach to individual needs regarding truth-telling in different situations. Moreover, the Chinese Code of Ethics should be modified to be more specific and applicable. Finally, a narrative ethics approach should be applied and teamwork between nurses, physicians and families should be established to support cancer patients and to ensure their autonomy and hope. Ethical considerations: This paper was approved by the Ethics Committee of The Second Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University. The authors have obtained consent to use the case study and it has been anonymised to preserve the patient's confidentiality.

Background The number of countries where nurses are legally permitted to prescribe has grown rapidly due to a variety of external and internal forces. Despite its international popularity, nurse prescribing has not yet been implemented in China widely. Objective The intent of this paper is to review the current international literature regarding nurse prescribing so as to explore the necessity and possibility of implementation of nurse prescribing in China and classify the research gap. Methods Eight electronic databases including Embase, SpringerLink, EBSCO, CINAHL, Medline, Wiley, Science Direct, CochraneLibrary were electronically searched to identify related peer-review articles published in the English language only from 2007 to 2017. Relative references found from the identified studies were traced back to ensure that potentially eligible articles were included. Results Thirty-three publications which met the inclusion criteria were included in this literature review. The literature shows that not only could nurse prescribing provide quicker service, improvements in quality, but also could make better utilization of the nurses' professional skills and increase nurses' autonomy. Moreover, the barriers of nurse prescribing are explored to identify the factors that may facilitate the success of its implementation. Conclusion The review advises that nurses' views towards nurse prescribing have played a significant role in the success of nurse prescribing. While no literature regarding Chinese nurses' attitudes towards nurse prescribing could be identified, it is imperative to examine their attitudes on it. This would help Chinese healthcare policymakers ascertain the necessity of the introduction of nurse prescribing and provide them with valuable information for service planning.

Prescriptive authority has been strictly in control within the realm of the medical profession for a long time (Fisher, 2010). However, prescriptive authority has become a reality amongst certain nurses in dozens of countries in response to growing demands for health care (Creedon et al., 2015;Delamaire & Lafortune, 2010). Nurse prescription has experienced a long process of development and was implemented at different times in different countries. It initially developed slowly, and was first introduced in the state of Idaho, America in 1969 (Fletcher et al., 2011). Since this first introduction, it has rapidly evolved globally over the past two decades.Literature has shown that not only could nurse prescription provide quicker service, improvements in quality, efficient patient care and continuity of care for patients (Courtenay et al., 2011;Tinelli et al., 2013) but also could make better utilization of the nurses' professional skills and knowledge (Phillips & Wilkinson, 2015) and increase nurses' autonomy and job satisfaction (Carey et al., 2009). Despite these, nurse prescribing has not yet been introduced widely in China.

Objective Mobile health (mHealth) provides an innovative and effective approach to promote prevention and management of coronary heart disease. However, the magnitude of its effects is unclear. The aim of this systematic review was to examine the impact of mHealth-based cardiac rehabilitation outcomes among coronary heart disease patients. Methods Medline, CINAHL, Embase, PubMed, Google Scholar, NICE, and Cochrane library were searched for randomized controlled trials published between January 2002 and March 2017 which compared mHealth with conventional cardiac rehabilitation programs among coronary heart disease patients. Results Eight articles were included in this review. The impact of mHealth interventions on physical activity, medicine adherence, smoking cessation, level of anxiety, and quality of life was inconsistent among the articles. Conclusions Further research is needed to conclusively determine the impact of mHealth interventions on cardiac rehabilitation outcomes. The limitations of the included studies (e.g., inadequate sample size, failure to address the core components of cardiac rehabilitation programs, and lack of theory-based design) should be taken into account when designing future studies.

Reflection is a fundamental skill of health-care professionals and plays an important role in ensuring the quality of care in health-care practice. It is believed that undertaking reflection in practice can help nurses develop an awareness of a sense of personal power and agency, cultivate their critical thinking ability and help them promote their professional development. However, reflection has not been introduced widely as a nursing curriculum in China, and literature shows that some clinical nurses lack critical thinking skills and critical reflective practice skills by reason of not receiving systematic education on reflection when they were at nursing college. Therefore, we present a series of seven articles focused on prevalent and interesting practice-based events to reflect on in this special issue. The main aim is to disseminate reflective methodology and techniques and present examples of reflective writing for nurses. It is expected that these articles will help to lead Chinese nurses to adopt critical emancipatory reflective processes to bring about transformative actions.