The Magnet Hospital is a nursing quality system project that has been one of the breakthrough projects under the HUS Strategy since 2017, as part of the international accreditation process.
Magnet Hospital is a designation awarded by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) on application for a hospital with excellent nursing, patient treatment results and nurse job satisfaction. There are about 500 Magnet Hospitals in the world. In the USA, about 8% of hospitals have Magnet Hospital status. There is one such hospital in Europe, the Universitair Ziekenhuis Antwerpen (UZA) in Belgium, accredited in 2017. The Nottingham University Hospital in the UK initiated the application process in autumn 2019.
The first application process for HUS units will start in autumn 2020. We are applying for Magnet Hospital status for the HUS Comprehensive Cancer Center, HUS Children and Adolescents, the HUS Heart and Lung Center and HUS Psychiatry. Nursing work at HUS as a whole is developed according to the Magnet Hospital model. This helps improve treatment outcomes, personnel job satisfaction and the finances of the organization. Raseborg Hospital is improving its nursing work with a view to gaining the Pathway to Excellence award from the ANCC.
According to the ANCC, it takes an organization seven years of average to develop into a Magnet Hospital. HUS has been on a ‘magnet journey’ for four years now. The Magnet Hospital status application process itself is two years long and in three stages: compliance with prerequisites, pre-application and actual application, and an evaluation visit on the basis of which the decision whether to award the status is made. In order to be eligible for Magnet Hospital status, an applicant must comply with the 50 criteria defined by ANCC for excellent nursing management, structures, operations, research, innovation and nursing work.
In the Annual Report of Nursing 2019 we discuss our improvement of nursing according to the Magnet Hospital criteria and its outcomes in more detail.