By Mary James, RN, BSN, Magnet Program Coordinator and Chris Stevenson RN, BSN, Magnet Program Director
As many of you may know already, members of the nursing division launched our Magnet Journey in 2009.
Magnet designation is granted by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), a division of the American Nurses Association (ANA) to recognize organizations that have implemented the over 100 required sources of evidence and demonstrated positive outcomes as a result of this implementation.
Magnet status isn't just a prize or an award; it's an evidence-based, performance-driven designation granted to an organization that has provided documentation of the components of Magnet.
Our Magnet journey is making us better already. The implementation of Nursing Shared Governance as one of the components of our Magnet Journey has yielded multiple exemplars of performance improvement. Among them are increased participation in the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators nurse satisfaction survey, notable increase in the patient satisfaction scores addressing nurse communications, improved scores on our core measure indicators and more complete documentation of nursing degrees and national certifications.
Establishing these structures and processes has already shown that we can generate positive outcomes.
While presenting the Magnet recognition program to NorthBay Healthcare staff, the following question has been asked: "How do the patient satisfaction and nurse satisfaction survey results affect the Magnet journey?"
The answer is they are both directly related to a successful Magnet designation. According the ANCC's Magnet Recognition Program Application (2008), "patient satisfaction data ....must outperform the mean of the national database used" and "the nurse satisfaction annual survey data....must outperform the mean of the national database used.
Magnetizing NorthBay will improve awareness of our outcome data in relation to the national database and focus efforts to continuously improve our structure and processes for patient and staff satisfaction.
Excellent clinical outcomes, patient and employee satisfaction scores will help to pull patients and nurses to our organization.
Magnet-designated hospitals recruit and retain talented clinicians because they recognize the opportunities and excellence present in a Magnet facility.
With a team of talented medical professionals, patients can expect to be cared for by knowledgeable and caring individuals at every level of service. Measures of clinical outcomes, patient and staff satisfaction are evidence that fulfilling the Magnet components leads to better organizational outcomes overall.
Our Magnet journey is making us better. Stay tuned.
