Cleveland Clinic’s Hillcrest Hospital Magnet Celebration

Cleveland Clinic’s Hillcrest Hospital has joined a prestigious list of healthcare organizations that have been honored as part of the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s (ANCC) Magnet Recognition Program®, which celebrates superior quality in nursing care. With this achievement, Hillcrest Hospital joins the Magnet community—a select group of 378 healthcare organizations out of the nearly 6,000 in the U.S.—with only 27 in the state of Ohio.

The evaluation process

ANCC conducts thorough evaluations in the following five key areas that are considered global issues in nursing and healthcare:

1. Visionary leadership transforming the organization to meet changing needs
2. Empowered staff properly prepared to face all challenges
3. Competent, dedicated, and skilled nurses
4. Continued innovation within staff knowledge, clinical practice, and systemic improvements
5. Outcomes measurement systems in place throughout the entire organization

The designation, a culmination of a three-year journey, provides patients with a benchmark to measure quality of nursing care.
Magnet Recognition Program surveyors noted an “incredible inter-professional collaboration” at Hillcrest Hospital.

“Our Magnet journey brought our nurses and other caregivers
together in an ongoing quest to improve patient safety and
satisfaction, creating a high-powered team that encourages everyone to find their voice and speak up,” says Sue Collier, DNP, RN, NEA-BC, Chief Nursing Officer and Vice President of Nursing for Hillcrest Hospital.

Words from the heart

At the Magnet® Celebration, Hillcrest Hospital nurses also took to the podium to share their insights and experiences.

Samantha Pon, RN, gave a touching speech on what Magnet means to her:

I am honored to be here today to talk about what being a Magnet nurse means to me. My journey to Magnet started when I was five years old and diagnosed with an atrial septal defect. I underwent open heart surgery and spent three days in the intensive care unit on life support. I remember being scared, feeling vulnerable and not understanding what wires, equipment, tubes and sounds were. It was probably one of the most frightening moments of my life, but what I remember more than the fear was the support, the compassion, and the concern that complete strangers gave me—my nurses.

The nurses that cared for me from surgery all the way up until I got a clean bill of health at 17 can be accredited with inspiring me to become a nurse. Not only did they inspire my future career, but they shaped what I wanted to bring to the bedside as a nurse. I knew I wanted to provide excellent, compassionate care and be that trustworthy support for people when they were in their most vulnerable situations like they had been for me. I wanted to be a Magnet nurse.

Being a Magnet nurse is an honor. The Magnet symbol is envied and one of a kind—it’s the Super Bowl ring for hospitals, but to me it is also a reminder. It reminds us that we have achieved the pinnacle of excellence in nursing. The Magnet symbol is a reminder that every day when we come in here we have the best of the best. It is a reminder to patients that they are getting excellent top quality care. It is a reminder to patient’s families that during difficult times, we provide the kind of care that they can trust, we provide the kind of care to the family as if they were our own.

To me the Magnet symbol is a reminder of everything that we have accomplished as a team. It is a reminder that we are held to the highest expectations, and anything less than excellent is simply unacceptable. It is a reminder to empower us as nurses to know that we lead with purpose and lead with a strong voice for our patients, a voice that fights for best outcomes, a voice that fights for change, and a voice that speaks for our patients. It is a reminder that as a nurse, we guide the research and innovation that will help to shape the future of nursing and patient care.

Lastly to me, being a Magnet nurse means that our hospital faced the challenge of the journey and we achieved it, but it also means we are just getting started, and I can’t wait to see where we go next as a team. We can only continue to go higher.

Lyndsey Bengal, RN, spoke to the audience on her experience at the Magnet® Conference:

My Magnet journey started in 2013 when my colleague started speaking to me about it. I traveled to Orlando for the Magnet Conference in October and was blown away! It was amazing to walk into the conference center and see how compassionate and excited all of those nurses were about their practice.

The three days were inspiring. We traveled back to Hillcrest and thought, how can we spread this magic to Hillcrest nurses? We started with the Magnet Champions—representatives from each floor—to help spread the word. I started giving out pieces of candy to my staff, if they listened to my “Monday Morning Magnet Minute,” they received a piece of candy.

The Magnet Champion program snowballed, and come “game day” the Hillcrest nurses shined! I was blessed to be chosen as an ambassador to walk one of the three surveyors around the hospital. It was amazing to feel the energy from the nursing staff as we went from floor to floor. And then to think that the lead ambassador was so impressed with the Hillcrest nurses that she came back to celebrate with us—it’s just amazing! I am so proud of my coworkers, fellow Magnet team members and all of the services at Hillcrest.

An elite club

Hillcrest Hospital is the third hospital in the Cleveland Clinic health system to earn Magnet designation. Main campus was bestowed with its first designation in 2003 with Fairview achieving recognition in 2009.