Issue link: https://nnumagazine.uberflip.com/i/1500738
would replace her. And as soon as she got it, she left. It was as if that was the only thing she wanted to achieve at LAMC." The Magnet system has created its own labor market for nursing executives focused on getting hospitals recognized through the pro- gram. On the ANCC website, it's clear that a chief nursing officer's résumé or CV is considered a "supportive document" for Magnet applicants, so it makes sense people would build their careers upon successfully attaining Magnet status. As a 2022 article in the Jour- nal of Nursing Administration titled "The Business Case for Magnet® Designation" puts it, "Creating a business case to secure the resources required to embark and travel on the Magnet journey is an essential tool for the chief nurse." Recent job openings for "Magnet coordinators" are seeking exactly that for Dell Seton Medical Center in Austin, Texas, and for Kaiser's Northern California region, which appears poised to make a major Magnet push. Like the nursing executives Abogado saw at LAMC, people in these positions are focused on that one goal only and, once achieved, quickly parlay that job into one at the next facility desperate for Magnet status. Spinney, the Texas RN, has seen a similar revolving- door effect for Magnet-focused nursing executives. It's clear that these nurse executives did not stick around long enough or even care to help the nursing staff solve systemic nursing problems at their facilities. "Our CNO left almost as soon as they got Magnet," she said. "It was shocking because everybody had worked so hard to get Magnet for her and done all this work for her, and she gave a very short amount of notice and then left to go to a different hospital in Houston." Part of the Magnet process involves the ANCC soliciting input from nurses at the facility. But Abogado said management would try to make sure they heard only from pro-Magnet nurses and that other nurses' efforts to reach out to the ANCC and ANA directly went unanswered. "There were signs in the breakroom saying, 'You can email us anonymously to tell us about your facility,'" she explained. "Many of us did! We wrote to them and said, 'LAMC is not ready for Magnet, we're not even staffed right.' And they went nowhere. They didn't even answer us or even acknowledge they received our email." Strum said union nurses at Maine Med were similarly frustrated by feeling like they were excluded from the Magnet appraisal pro- cess. In their breakroom, pro-union nurses attempted to get involved with the appraisers, but found them elusive, a stark con- trast from how nurses in management outside the bargaining unit were treated during the process. "I don't think it really matters when they walk through and talk to nurses," Strum said. "A lot of union nurses were going into the break- room to try and be in the conversation, and they would just move to a different place so the union nurses wouldn't be there. It was very obvious that they were only trying to get one side of the story." * * * * * F or Spinney in Texas, the Magnet process at her facility was frustrating because many of the ideas and organizations nurses had originated to support one another were co-opted by management to look good for the Magnet application and appraisal process. She said a local interfacility nursing congress, a night shift council, and a new grad mentoring program all went from nurse-organized initiatives to projects management co-opted for the sake of Magnet. "I am a night shift nurse. I've only ever worked the night shift," Spinney said, explaining why she was part of a "night shift council" (NSC) of nocturnal RNs at her facility. That council helped night shift nurses plug into meetings they might miss during the day or advocate for themselves when, as Spinney put it, "Even adminis- trators seem to forget we're a 24-hour facility." "I was excited and voted for forming something like NSC, and upper management quickly realized that was something they could use for their Magnet application," Spinney explained. "It started out great, but as soon as we got Magnet status, they dissolved the coun- cil within months. That is the kind of pattern I see over and over." The same thing happened with their local nursing congress, which was a body that had representatives from every unit of every Ascension facility in the region. Originally a "robust" network shar- ing knowledge and information, management once again decided it would look good for Magnet and got involved. In Spinney's eyes, they ran it into the ground. "It was a really great way to collaborate across the network and talk about nursing practice and evidence-based stuff," Spinney said. "I was so impressed with nurses' problem solving, working together, and having an open forum where you wouldn't be retaliated against or judged for asking a question." "It was a really robust meeting up until about 2017, and Ascen- sion started changing the way the administrators and executives were involved in things and got really involved," she said, explaining that the meetings "immediately" started to disintegrate as a result. "They were trying to get insight for marketing strategies, which is the opposite of what that council was designed for." Another example for Spinney came in a mentoring program she helped launch. Originally conceived as a way to help new grad nurses acclimate to working in hospital settings, it was co-opted by a hospital educator. After that, Spinney said, it was touted in their Magnet appraisal process. * * * * * P rograms like new-hire mentorships are a great way to help just-hired nurses integrate into a hospital and a community. Situations like what happened at Spinney's hospital in Aus- tin are troubling evidence in a pattern that, despite all the pomp and circumstance, the Magnet program might not even be helping staff nurse retention. In fact, it could be hurting it. Now that LAMC is Magnet, Abogado said the designation hasn't helped nursing staff retention at all. In fact, it may be harming retention. Because of the Magnet program's focus on BSN nurses, BSN new grads get high priority in hiring. It's such a big deal that the numbers of BSN and ADN nurses are tracked publicly in each unit. Despite this, turnover remains high and attrition might actually be exacerbated by the emphasis on more advanced educa- tion, as Abogado said these types of new grads often don't remain at the bedside for long. 18 N A T I O N A L N U R S E W W W . N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G A P R I L | M AY | J U N E 2 0 2 3 "We might've got a free coffee or something, but I don't think we even got a pizza party, to tell you the truth. Probably, we didn't get our breaks that day, like any other day."