Congratulations to Our Clients Who Achieved Magnet® Designation in 1Q 2024!

As we near the end of 2024’s first quarter, we express our joy and congratulations to our clients who have achieved their Magnet^® designations from the American Nurses Credentialing Center in 2024 so far! We are so happy for you and your incredible nursing teams who have given their all to demonstrate their excellence in the profession and rise to the rigorous challenges of this prestigious designation. The following is a partial list of clients who have achieved Magnet^® designation so far in 2024. Congratulations to all involved!

• Mary Greeley Medical Center
• MedStar Harbor Hospital
• MedStar Montgomery Medical Center
• Morristown Medical Center
• Nationwide Children’s Hospital
• Riley Hospital for Children at Indiana University Health

As you navigate the exciting journey towards securing the prestigious ANCC Magnet^® Designation, let’s dive into a pivotal element that sets the stage for success – RN Satisfaction/Engagement Surveys. Consider this your backstage pass to understanding the pulse of your hospital’s nursing environment, strategically steering towards excellence.

Decoding the RN Satisfaction Survey: In a nutshell, this survey is your compass to navigate the intricate landscape of your nursing team’s sentiments and satisfaction. It goes beyond the routine checklists and instead becomes a dynamic tool to ensure your nurses are not just engaged but thriving in their roles. Many hospitals conduct this survey annually and review data collected over the years to analyze trends and areas of opportunity or improvement.

Categories Unveiled: The survey unfolds across seven crucial categories, each offering a unique lens into the nurse experience. From the ambiance of the work environment to the effectiveness of leadership and the recognition doled out, it’s a comprehensive exploration of what makes your nursing team truly tick. The seven Magnet^® categories for EP3EO are as follows:

• Adequacy of Resources and Staffing
• Autonomy
• Fundamentals of Quality Nursing Care
• Interprofessional Relationships
• Leadership Access and Responsiveness
• Professional Development
• RN-to-RN Teamwork and Collaboration

Choosing Your Stars: Here’s where the strategy comes in – you get to cherry-pick the four categories where your unit shines the brightest. It’s like assembling a dream team for your Magnet^® application narrative. The catch? To be deemed an outperforming unit, you need to sparkle in three out of these four chosen categories, elevating your game beyond the benchmark. It’s a commitment to excellence that goes beyond the ordinary. More than 50% of your units must outperform three of the four categories to meet the EP3EO Magnet^® Standard.

Timing and Consistency: To make the cut for Magnet^® designation consideration, ensure your most recent survey falls within the 30 months prior to your submission date. Consistency is key, as all four categories submitted must align, allowing you the flexibility to play with different benchmarks. It’s about demonstrating a sustained commitment to excellence across the board. Tipton Health can assist you in selecting the categories that best represent your organization and provide data-driven feedback to establish or maintain goals, create strategic plans, and provide sustainable action items.

Choosing the Right Vendor: Ready to embark on this journey? Consult the ANCC’s Magnet^®-approved vendor list to select the right vendor for your RN Satisfaction Survey. It’s like having a trusted guide, ensuring your insights are not just valuable but also aligned with Magnet^® standards.

Fostering Unity: Hospitals must report their overall nursing participation rate in their submission document. Aim high – shoot for 80% or more of your nurses actively participating in the survey. Many of our clients have found success in infusing a bit of friendly competition between units to drive up participation rates. It’s not just about gathering data; it’s about engaging your entire nursing team in the pursuit of excellence.

The Data Services team at Tipton Health is here to assist you with reporting your RN Satisfaction/Engagement Survey results! We are here to transform this process into a celebration of strengths, a roadmap for improvement, and a testament to the outstanding work your nursing team undertakes every day. Together, we’re not just reaching for Magnet^® Designation; we’re propelling towards an era of nursing excellence!

Jimmy is an editor on the Nursing Excellence Validation Team (NEVT) and the coordinator for the Tipton Connections Magnet^® Newsletter. He graduated with his master’s degree in English from East Carolina University in 2015, where he began his writing coaching and editing career serving as a tutor in the university writing center and as an editorial assistant at North Carolina Literary Review. As he built his expertise in technical writing, he was drawn to Tipton Health as a way to use his skills to make a positive difference for nurses and their teams.

More About Jimmy

Prior to joining the NEVT at Tipton Health, Jimmy served as an English instructor at local community colleges in eastern North Carolina, and he then transitioned to a technical writer role where he served for four years. We met with Jimmy to ask him about his work on the NEVT, writing tips, and more.

What would you say is the most rewarding part of working on the NEVT?

Naturally, a hugely rewarding part of this job is getting the good news that a client successfully completed their Magnet^® designation. We want our clients to succeed as much as they do, and it’s always a special occasion to get the message that we’ve helped another client across the finish line on their journey. I love seeing the celebratory pictures from the clients who share them! I also love the small victories, such as when we help a client with a unique or challenging example and fit it into the Magnet^® requirements to help them show off their nursing team’s great efforts in the way they deserve.

Do you have any advice for clients throughout their Magnet^® journey?

Begin keeping a meticulous record of dates as soon as possible. Generally speaking, each step in a Magnet^® narrative will need a MONTH YEAR date, and evidence files for SOEs will need to have dates that align with your narrative. Speaking of your evidence files, it’s important to ensure that the main characters are shown performing the actions in the story in as many files as possible. I would also advise that if an evidence file has a space for a signature, such as the Performance Review examples, make sure that the appropriate person has signed the document before sending it in for review.

Is there anything you would like clients to know as they’re beginning the Magnet^® designation journey?

We are here to be your partner throughout your entire journey, and part of that is that we can help you create a detailed writing schedule from the start of your journey that will help you organize your examples, assign them to writers, and keep your designation on track. Creating this schedule and sticking to it will help reduce your stress and ensure that your documents are submitted and returned at a steady pace. I also advise making sure that your ambulatory areas are defined with us from the beginning so that everyone is on the same page for your examples requiring ambulatory settings.

What is your favorite Magnet^® example?

I’m going to cheat a bit here and say that I have a favorite category. My favorites are the patient-specific narratives, such as the SE13 examples of Culturally and Socially Sensitive Care and the EP4 example where we see nurses partnering with patients and families to influence change within the organization. Patient-specific examples really show off nurses going above and beyond for their patients and patient families to deliver the highest quality of compassionate care that Magnet^® is all about.

Do you have any recommendations that you think would help clients close to submission?

One thing that will definitely help is to prepare to upload your Magnet^® documents to ADAM as early as possible to avoid any associated delays when getting close to submission. The ANCC website has a video detailing the ADAM upload process, and the Tipton Health data team also offers a one hour walkthrough of the process. We also recommend sending an email to your analyst after you upload your Magnet^® documents to ADAM to confirm that everything was received.

Do you have any fun plans for the weekend?

It’s about time to get the pool running again, and I’m definitely going to make some time to get lost in Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth!

The 2023 Magnet^® Application Manual includes the new TL12 example, which requires a demonstration of nurse advocacy promoting individual or community health at an external forum. Let’s take a look at three key elements.

Advocacy: This is considered a pillar of the nursing profession’s social mandate and an ethical imperative. Well-informed, engaged nurses can advance evidence-informed policies to enhance the patient experience, improve population health, reduce healthcare costs, and improve nurse well-being. Policies complement health programs and services. The Future of Nursing Report 2020-2030 challenges nurses to engage in political processes to initiate, enact, and enforce structural and policy changes to benefit community health. Extending policy advocacy beyond individual patients to the healthcare delivery system leads to consideration of the many factors that influence health when advocating for policies. In this view, systemic change and care delivery change have equal importance. Most individual nurses have experience advocating for their patients and less experience advocating for federal, state, and local health and social policy. Nursing organizations and academic programs offer educational certificates in health policy, regulation, and media engagement to build self-efficacy in policymaking and the differences or connections between policy and politics. Nurses can join professional nursing organizations and share their expertise for health-related policy reform.

Health Promotion: For Magnet^® purposes, health promotion encompasses good governance for health, health literacy, and healthy cities. Nurses and other professionals serve on county-level strategic planning groups that conduct community health needs assessments and develop implementation strategies in alignment with similar county and state population health cycles. Nurses may advocate for health priorities and strategies to improve community health (e.g., more community partner support to connect patients to community resources identified by social determinants of health screening). Nurses may partner with consumer health libraries to help patients and families build their understanding of a health condition or staff a mobile clinic that provides community outreach and education.

External Forums: These include government or non-government organizations that make decisions that impact healthcare. For example, nursing organizations serve as a critical platform for legislative and political advocacy to influence federal and state health policy (e.g., ANA or affiliated state nurse association, AORN, and AONE). The ANA works with federal lawmakers to advocate for nursing priorities and monitors nursing-related state legislation. The annual AONL Day of Advocacy event teaches nurse leaders how to connect their personal stories with AONL congressional requests and effectively advocate about the impact of national issues on their patients, communities, and nursing teams. AONL pairs nurse leaders with fellow advocates from their state district in scheduled congressional meetings. This prepares nurse leaders to effectively influence healthcare quality by engaging with policymakers to get nursing issues on policy agendas (AONL, 2024). For example, many nurse leaders have advocated for H.R. 7961 Safety from Violence for Healthcare Employees Act (SAVE Act).

Writing a TL12 Example: To start, name the nurse(s), the health promotion, and the external forum. Then, describe how the nurse(s) assessed the need for the health promotion, how they prepared to advocate, and how they advocated at the external forum (using names and dates). End with the date of the health promotion, and explain how the promotion would benefit a specific population. Evidence files should strongly support the narrative description of the assessed need, advocacy steps, and health promotion. We are excited to read your inspiring nurse advocacy stories!

The ANCC Pathway to Excellence^® program recognizes a health care organization’s commitment to creating a positive environment that empowers and engages staff. The 2024 Pathway to Excellence^® Application Standards were released in late 2023, with the first cycle to submit to the 2024 Pathway to Excellence^® manual beginning February 1, 2025.

The ANCC Pathway to Excellence^® Framework depicts the six standards that are essential in developing a positive practice environment for nursing across a variety of health settings: Shared Decision-Making, Leadership, Safety, Quality, Well-Being, and Professional Development. A comparison with the 2020 manual reveals the 2024 Pathway to Excellence^® Application Standards adds eight new “Elements of Performance” responses (EOP), as well updates to recurring EOPs. These new EOPs and updates demonstrate a stronger focus on nurses participating in shared decision-making, ensuring nurse well-being with a theme on ensuring nurse safety and mental health. For example, the new EOP 3.9 addresses creating a culture where meal and rest breaks are planned and consistently taken. Also, the new EOP 5.1 addresses how your organization raises awareness of mental health issues prevalent among nurses and the help available to nurses.

We’ve also found a stronger emphasis on recognizing diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) in the 2024 manual, such as the new EOP 4.9, which looks for a description of how your organization promotes a culture of DEIB to optimize the nursing workforce, and how it assesses the effectiveness of associated DEIB strategies.

Other recurring themes in the 2024 manual include more examples involving the participation and leadership of direct care nurses, as well as demonstrating shared decision making and its effectiveness.

Organizations submitting to the 2020 Pathway to Excellence^® program can do so through November 1, 2024.

If you haven’t already done so, it would be immensely helpful if you could spare two minutes and complete our annual client survey (please click on the link below). We care deeply about your satisfaction and experience in working with Tipton Health and are committed to continuous improvement. The survey results will help set a baseline for where we are today and define what we can do to improve our service and better meet your needs. The survey will be open through March 30, 2024.

Thank you in advance!

Annual Client Satisfaction Survey