Transcription:
Magnet & Nursing Excellence

Intro: Riverside Healthcare, puts the health and wellness information you need well within reach.

Gabby Cinnamon: Welcome back to the Well Within Reach podcast. I'm your host, Gabby Cinnamon. And today, I'm joined by Erica Ohlendorf, registered nurse and clinical nurse educator here at Riverside to talk about Magnet and what it means to be a Magnet-designated hospital. Thank you so much for joining me today, Erika.

Erika Ohlendorf: Thanks for having me.

Gabby Cinnamon: So, can you kind of tell us a little bit about yourself before we get into the Magnet topic?

Erika Ohlendorf: Yeah. So I've been with Riverside for seven years, was a nurse two years prior to that. And in my time here at Riverside, I've worked in the ICU and on the IMCU. And at the beginning of this year, I took the role of clinical nurse educator. Through that role, I do inpatient nurse education that focuses a lot on our quality outcomes. So it was kind of a natural progression to be incorporated into our Magnet program and Magnet designation process. So I'm currently now with education, also oversee our shared governance councils as well as coordinated our recent Magnet site visits.

Gabby Cinnamon: Oh, wow. It sounds like you have a lot of experience in a variety of roles, which is awesome.

Erika Ohlendorf: Yes. Definitely helps to bring kind of that whole organizational view together.

Gabby Cinnamon: Yeah. That's great. So Riverside recently got some very exciting news. We were re-designated as a Magnet hospital for the third time. First, can you tell us what is Magnet?

Erika Ohlendorf: Yeah. So, Magnet is a recognition for excellent patient care, really focusing on how nurses collaborate with interdisciplinary teams to provide that care. It's kind of the gold standard of nursing and healthcare. It looks at five key components. They're transformational leadership, structural empowerment, exemplary professional practice, new knowledge innovation and improvement and empirical outcomes. So all of those are things that we have to show we do in order to be a Magnet organization.

What's really cool with Magnet is the vision of magnet is actually to transform healthcare globally by bringing knowledge, skill, innovation, leadership, and compassion to every person, family, and community, which I feel just aligned so well with Riverside's mission and vision, especially our nursing vision, which is that professional nurses are empowered to achieve a culture of excellence.

Gabby Cinnamon: Wow, it sounds like a lot obviously when it goes into the designation process and there's a lot of moving parts, so that's awesome that all those things come together and that we were designated again. It's great.

Erika Ohlendorf: Yes, very exciting.

Gabby Cinnamon: So let's say, you know, a patient is looking where they want to receive care and maybe they come across that a hospital is Magnet-designated. What does that mean for them in their care? You mentioned that a level of excellence for patient care goes into the Magnet designation, but what does that exactly mean to a patient?

Erika Ohlendorf: Yeah. So the two areas that are really highlighted that are very important for patients are quality and safety and patient outcomes. So Magnet hospitals have to prove that they outperform other hospitals in these areas. So for quality and safety, it's just things like implementing evidence-based practice, having a good quality of care, patient experience, and then patient outcomes. Studies show that all Magnet hospitals have lower fall rates, lower hospital-acquired infection.

Gabby Cinnamon: Oh, wow.

Erika Ohlendorf: You know, the goal is always that you come to the hospital, we get you better. Unfortunately, in healthcare, there can be complications, but Magnet hospitals show to have less of those and improved outcomes.

Gabby Cinnamon: Wow. So it definitely sounds like it's a benefit to a patient, being treated at a Magnet hospital, for sure.

Erika Ohlendorf: Very much so, yeah.

Gabby Cinnamon: Oh, that's awesome. Switching gears a little bit. What does it mean for our employees, since we are a Magnet-designated hospital, you know, how does that impact them?

Erika Ohlendorf: Yeah. So a lot of people think Magnet, they think nurses, which is a huge part of it. But I always like to remind people, nurses can't do their job without everyone within the organization. So it is that collaboration, that interdisciplinary team approach that allows us to be a magnet organization. We have shared governance councils here that focus on a variety of different things. And we're actually lucky to have people, not just nurses, on our shared governance councils. So always looking to expand those and include more people because the care we give isn't possible without these different areas.

Magnet hospitals also attain and retain the top talent. People want to work at Magnet hospitals, and also promotes and encourages professional development. So at Riverside, some of the professional development for nursing is pursuing their bachelor's degree or certifications. And Riverside has made it possible with tuition reimbursement, our Nursing Excellence funds to help support financially these endeavors as well as programs that we partner with the ANCC, which is the credentialing body for Magnet called Success Pays, which allows nurses to get certified at no out-of-pocket expense to themselves.

Gabby Cinnamon: Oh, that's awesome. That's great.

Erika Ohlendorf: Yeah.

Gabby Cinnamon: So it sounds like being an employee at a Magnet-designated hospital is something you should be proud of.

Erika Ohlendorf: Yes. Very much so.

Gabby Cinnamon: It's a huge honor. It's great. There's so many things that go into it. Can you talk a little bit more about the process of becoming a Magnet-designated hospital? You kind of talked about that at the beginning, but there's a lot of moving parts and I know there were some site visits and those kinds of things, because you kind of talk about that for people who are like, "Well, how did this even happen?"

Erika Ohlendorf: Yeah. So, for a Magnet organization, the ANCC looks at four years of data when you apply to either designate or re-designate. So this current journey that we were on was looking at data from August 2016 to August 2020.

From that, we have to then submit documents which we submit over a hundred documents within the categories of Magnetism that I had referenced earlier. And those documents, we submitted this February. It took a huge team approach to write all these documents, review all of them. And what's very exciting for the organization this year is they were accepted with zero deficiencies.

Gabby Cinnamon: Oh my gosh. That's awesome.

Erika Ohlendorf: Yeah. So that means that the documents we submitted were phenomenal to begin with, so very proud of the whole team that made those documents possible. The documents were a lot to write, but they just highlighted what we already do. So in that sense, they were very easy. After the documents are accepted by the ANCC, because we had no deficiencies, we didn't have to rewrite anything. It was just ready to go to site visits. So we had a virtual site visit this year in June where our appraisers, we had three wonderful appraisers who are with us virtually for three days. And their purpose of a site visit is to amplify what we pre-submitted in our documents. And they actually left our site visit saying they spent a hundred percent of their time amplifying the work that didn't have to seek out new examples or anything like that. It was all perfectly there. And they were very impressed with our entire team. They met with nurses, members of the interdisciplinary team. Over the three days, they met with our night shift first thing in the morning, after shift and stayed with us virtually all day in a variety of different meetings just to hear the wonderful work that we've been doing.

Gabby Cinnamon: Wow. That's very impressive. It sounds like a lot went into it, but things really fell into place. And because of the hard work of our employees, you know, getting all the exemplars and everything, that's amazing to hear. So you touched on, you know, why it's important that Riverside is a Magnet-designated hospital, but why is it such a big deal?

Erika Ohlendorf: So there's actually only about 9% of hospitals nationwide that are Magnet-designated, which is about 500 hospitals and there's only 40 in Illinois. So to have that level of excellence here in Kankakee is just an amazing resource for our community. And it just shows how much and how important our community is to us that we're going to pursue these things to provide the best possible care to the community that we live in and that we care for.

Gabby Cinnamon: Wow. That's so cool. Especially, you know, as you mentioned, you know, we're not a big community, but being able to be so close to a hospital that provides this high level of care is incredible. And, you know, when you go to the hospital, that you're receiving the best care that you can, which is great. And this just, you know, exemplifies that.

Erika Ohlendorf: Exactly.

Gabby Cinnamon: So, is there anything else we need to know about Magnet?

Erika Ohlendorf: You know, I think you've kind of touched on it earlier, just the honor and pride to be at a Magnet organization, for me personally, it was something that I wanted from learning about it, a nursing school. And when I relocated to Kankakee, that was very important to me to find a Magnet hospital. And now I'm grateful that I did, and I'm a part of it and so actively involved in this process. I am looking forward to all the work we'll continue to do as we move for another designation in four years.

Gabby Cinnamon: Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Erika. This has been an exciting podcast, especially with the recent re-designation. And I thank you so much for all of your hard work that you put into it as well.

Erika Ohlendorf: Thank you.

Gabby Cinnamon: And thank you, listeners, for tuning in to the Well Within Reach podcast, brought to you by Riverside Healthcare. For more information, visit riversidehealthcare.org.