Driving quality improvement across a health system to create a deeply connected nursing and patient experience takes a sustained, dedicated effort.

During September’s Becker’s Hospital Review podcast, three distinguished healthcare leaders discussed how ANCC’s Magnet Recognition Program allows them to boost loyalty at Christiana Care, a network of private non-profit hospitals in Delaware. Tabassum Salam, M.D., Chief Learning Officer, and Julie MoDavis, Director of Customer Experience Reporting and Insight, both of ChristianaCare, joined Billy Kuehn, Director of Process and Training at NRC Health, to discuss the power of championing the exclusive designation.

“It’s a process that we use for all of us caregivers of all disciplines to align and focus on our unrelenting efforts to improve patient outcomes,” says Dr. Salam. “There’s a rigor and a discipline required to systematically build and sustain all the education, programs, quality and safety improvement projects, and patient-experience improvement projects that all our nurses and clinicians collectively utilize in pursuit of excellent patient outcomes.”

ChristianaCare achieved its first Magnet designation in 2010 and has subsequently achieved designation in 2015 and 2020. Kuehn described studies that prove registered nurses working in a Magnet-designated hospital are 18% less likely to be dissatisfied with their job than their counterparts working in non-Magnet institutions—which is critical, given that 54% of physicians have self-reported burnout. Further, when comparing 56 Magnet-designated hospitals with 500 other hospitals in the United States, mortality rates at Magnet hospitals were 20% lower than the rest.

“For Christiana Care, it always starts with the ‘why’ behind experience, which is articulated and emphasized not only by our team, but certainly by all of our caregivers as well,” explains MoDavis. “Our two core values are love and excellence, and experience is deeply embedded in both of those values. And we use that as the framework for our engagement with our partners from all disciplines.”

Here are three pieces of advice that are helpful for hospitals that may be considering the Magnet Recognition Program:

1. Embrace the spirit of continuous improvement. “The actual value is in the collective self-reflection and the activation of your whole team to work on enhancing quality metrics, safety metrics, and patient experience, enabling every single one of us to rise and help our teams, and elevate the way we take care of each other and patients and families,” Dr. Salam says.That impetus for process improvement is priceless, she says. “It allows us collectively as an organization to propel ourselves forward.”
2. Recognize that healthcare is best delivered by a multi-disciplinary team. “We center our focus on patients and families and on improving their outcomes,” Dr. Salam says. “That’s a universal goal, and everyone in the care team can get behind it.”“No one role or discipline can achieve something as great as experience alone,”MoDavis agrees.“This deep work was interdisciplinary, and we have seen some great success with it—I think, owed in no small part to ensuring that all members of the care team saw themselves in the improvement and were on the same page regarding goals and how to achieve them.”
3. Use compliment-sharing as much as possible. “I find a lot of value in positive reinforcement—making sure that every member of the care team, both clinical and nonclinical, can see the value of their contributions,” Dr. Salam says.“I think one thing we do with a lot of intention is, we make sure that our caregivers hear all the positive things our patients have to say about their care. Members of our team painstakingly find all our patients’ words of appreciation from our patient-experience surveys, and our collaborative team over at NRC Health enables a lot of the tools that make it efficient for us to do so.”

Don’t Miss Us! NRC Health will attend ANCC’s Magnet Pathway Conference on October 12–14 in Chicago. Don’t miss us at Booth 1210; stop by, say hi, and grab some great swag! 

Learn more! View our Magnet case studies:
Wellstar Paulding Hospital delights in its performance and nursing excellence capability
Patient-experience solution increases rapid cycle improvement for Magnet redesignation