HUP recently received its fourth Magnet designation from the American Nurses Credentialing Center, one of the highest achievements a hospital can reach in the world of professional nursing. But even more impressive is that the hospital has met — and frequently surpassed — these gold standards of nursing since 2007, when it first received the recognition. Although it is a nursing excellence award, the designation reinforces the quality of the hospital’s entire faculty and staff.
In addition to achieving redesignation, Magnet appraisers who completed the site visit identified 10 examples of practice that they consider to be exemplary, i.e., “so good that they far surpass basic Magnet standards and should be replicated across the country,” said Jessie Reich, MSN, Magnet Program director, who oversaw the entire Magnet application process. The exemplars — all of which are nurse-led — cover a variety of areas, from the continuum of care nurses provide for patients undergoing bilateral hand or uterine transplants to the SOAR program, which helps keep geriatric patients safely at home following discharge, and gender neutral birth certificates to meet the needs of LGBTQ families.
Pulling together an application for Magnet accreditation — which must be done every four years — is not an easy process. It requires 100 examples of practice within four distinct areas or domains of nursing showing how a hospital has successfully met specific standards. But what made this last submission even more difficult was a decision — made in the fall of 2019 — to submit the application seven months in advance.
As Reich explained, with the original October 2020 submission date, the site visit would have occurred some time in the spring of 2021. This was the exact time period when training and education would have been underway for staff transferring to HUP East, which was then slated to open in July of this year. Colleen Mattioni, DNP, HUP’s chief nursing executive, spoke with Reich about possibly moving up the submission date, which would then place the site visit in the summer of 2020, well in advance of the necessary training. “Colleen’s foresight really drove the decision,” Reich said. She moved ahead to pull the document together. The successful site visit took place in the summer, before the second COVID resurge.
“This designation represents the unwavering commitment HUP nurses have to our patients, to each other, and to all members of the interprofessional team,” Reich said.