When it comes to nursing, there are hostile workplaces, amenable workplaces, and then there are positively amazing workplaces. If you recently graduated, it’s likely that you’ve been jumping from place to place, covering shifts, and trying to find a hospital or health center where you feel truly at home. If this is the case, then you should look into “Magnet” hospitals, as these places, allegedly, offer some of the best working conditions in the entire industry.

These places earn their title of “Magnet” hospitals due to their gold standards of quality when it comes to patient and employee satisfaction, low nurse turnover and vacancies, and other factors that contribute to creating a positive work environment for all employees, but especially for the nurses that work there. In this sense, this designation, true to its name, implies that nurses will gravitate towards it due to its favorable conditions, and will want to stay for as long as possible.

However, aside from the superficial perks, do the work conditions in these centers truly live up to the title, or are they just a buzzword used to attract nurses to places with urgent staffing issues?

What Is the Magnet Designation?

In 1993, the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) launched its Magnet Recognition Program as a way to identify certain hospitals and workplaces that show an ideal set of working conditions, which favor nurses the most. These hospitals offer amenities that are seldom seen in other places, which would make them an ideal choice for nurses seeking a good workplace.

The ANCC based their designation on several specific factors, including a higher percentage of satisfied nurses, greater nurse autonomy, lower nurse turnover and vacancies, and improved patient satisfaction. However, these factors are frequently in the eye of the observer, which makes documenting the factors that contribute toward a magnet designation a difficult task. So, are magnet hospitals indeed all they’re hyped up to be?

The process to obtain a magnet designation might shed some light.

Obtaining magnet status

The process used for issuing magnet status consists of a long, arduous 4-year period of observation that costs around $2 million to complete. Due to this staggering cost, only a handful of hospitals in the United States (8.8% nationwide) have earned this credential. The list of requirements is very long, but usually boils down to several key factors:

• Nurse Performance and Feedback: The hospital must develop tools to measure and observe the performance of their nursing personnel to compare them to the data from other health centers for benchmarking purposes. They must also develop tools for nurses to anonymously report any misdemeanors or other negative aspects of the workplace.
• Academic Preparation and Hierarchy: All nurses that occupy positions between manager and chief nursing officer must have, at least, a bachelor’s degree in nursing. Also, the chief nursing officer must be designated as a participant in the hospital’s governing body. To this end, the CNO must have, at least, a master’s degree in nursing. If their master’s degree is not in nursing, then they must have a bachelor’s degree or a doctorate in nursing.
• Individual Nurse Authority: All nurses must have a say in patient care, as well as be involved in data collection.

All of these factors help to foster a positive work environment for nurses, where they are encouraged to fulfill their real potential as opposed to blindly following orders. In this sense, a survey found that nurses that work in magnet hospitals experience a higher degree of satisfaction, and reported being more engaged with their work, compared to other, non-magnet hospitals.

Other surveys also report less work-related accidents by a margin of at least 7.1% in magnet hospitals. Additionally, these hospitals also have dramatically-decreased nurse workplace injuries, as well as fewer incidents related to blood and body fluid exposure. This means that, in these workplaces, the risk of suffering fractures, either of musculoskeletal nature due to the workload, or from accidents such as needle pricks, is much lower. Likewise, the patients are less likely to develop complications from mistreatment or negligence, such as from pressure ulcers, or from falls.

It seems all the evidence points to the magnet designation as a unique title to improve a specific health center’s visibility for nurses who are on the hunt for a nursing gig in a positive work environment. Not only are these centers top of the line when it comes to quality standards, they also have measures in place to ensure that every nurse has the tools they need to realize their potential and be the best they can be in the workplace.