El Camino named a magnet hospital El Camino named a magnet hospital (December 30, 2005)

New status expected to attract high-quality nurses

By Molly Tanenbaum

El Camino Hospital has received "magnet status," a special credential from the American Nurses Credentialing Center that recognizes top nursing care. El Camino is the only hospital in the Bay Area, and one of eight in California, with this status.

"This really is the highest recognition within the nursing profession," said Diana Russell, vice president of patient care services at El Camino and a nurse who organized a team to apply for magnet status. "The nurses at El Camino are so proud of having achieved this status."

Becoming a magnet hospital was over three years in the making for El Camino. A team of nurses put together 6,000 pages of documentation to submit last spring, including the required 12 months of data on patient outcomes and other indicators about the quality of nursing care and work life at the hospital.

Then, a few months after a four-day site visit by two surveyors in the fall, the good news came.

"For nurses, this designation really indicates that this is a place where you would want to work," Russell said. "It's a nurse-friendly environment and one in which they [nurses] are really valued."

El Camino was first designated as a magnet hospital in the 1970s when the application process was much less rigorous, according to Russell, and this is the second time El Camino has received the title. Originally, Russell said, there were only about 40 magnet hospitals nationwide, but now there are about 170, accounting for less than 3 percent of the country's hospitals.

Retaining the magnet designation requires a yearly report, and after four years, El Camino must reapply.

The American Nurses Credentialing Center, established by the American Nurses Association, looks at how nurses participate in decision-making, how many nurses have national certification, nurse retention rates and the use of recent research in care, in addition to quality-of-care indicators such as patient outcomes. El Camino has a nurse vacancy rate of 4.8 percent, which is low, according to Russell.

The magnet designation implies increased nurse retention and recruitment rates, as well as high job satisfaction.

"Nurses look for environments to work where they're valued and respected and they look for an environment where they can participate and be involved in decision-making," Russell said. "We have a strong physician-nurse relationship. Our physicians highly regard our nursing staff."

Independent research has shown that magnet-designated facilities outperform non-magnet institutions in patient outcomes and satisfaction, according to El Camino's Dec. 22 press release. Other California facilities that have achieved magnet status include University of California hospitals at Irvine, Davis and Los Angeles, Scripps Memorial Hospital and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

E-mail Molly Tanenbaum at mtanenbaum@mv-voice.com

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