Break this down for me Barney-style, since I'm not even a nursing student yet (I apply after this semester). I have seen a few posters here say that magnet hospitals are a crap place to work. When I googled "magnet hospital", all I could find were blurbs like this, that don't sound bad at all:
"The Magnet Recognition Program is a recognition program operated by the American Nurses Credentialing Center that recognizes healthcare organizations that provide excellence in nursing. It is considered the highest recognition for nursing excellence.[1] The program also offers an avenue to disseminate successful nursing practices and strategies. ANCC proclaims that "A growing body of research indicates that Magnet hospitals have higher percentages of satisfied RNs, lower RN turnover and vacancy, improved clinical outcomes and improved patient satisfaction."[2]"
These are obviously contradictory, but I'm sure that people are saying they're not the best place to work have some reasoning, since I've seen it more than a couple times.
interesting you say this about BSN. I actually did learn this in my BA courses.... to sum it up in a nutshell if its not .gov, .edu, than it better be a peer reviewed journal for info to be considered accurate aka Unbiased (although I may be missing one or 2 other sources) but I think you get my point to the general idea. But lets not give too much credit, its no BSN...
Thanks for posting that :) No wonder people are confused. We can't just blame some internal lack of intelligence to 'them', there are genuine external confusions. There's probably a reasonable explanation for this one, but look at the effect it has. Bad ideas are one thing, but if our source of information is carelessly tossed together or deliberately misused to bolster an agenda on EITHER side, we're all clueless.
There's a free class on Coursera right now called "Metaliteracy: Empowering Yourself in a Connected World". It's been going on three weeks now but it allowed me to sign up and watch the last few week's videos. So far it gets at addressing these kinds of issues, how to look for and access information in all of it's many forms in this age of HUGE amounts of information at your fingertips on the internet. Knowing what information is true or accurately presented is a big challenge. I've seen people on this forum use a personal blog as 'evidence' for what they believe about X. Maybe this is one thing the BSN DOES do, which is teach a person how to do basic research, and what a relevant source is versus a less relevant source.
in my city/state - magnet hospitals MAIN difference is that they require you to have a BSN. They only hire BSN's, and the whole definition given to us is that it is a hospital that "attracts and hires" those with higher level educations in effort to gain MAGNET status. However, they do not have "better outcomes", nor are they considered the better hospitals. In fact the few hospitals that still hire LPN's and ASN's/RN's are outperforming and growing at a faster rate, and those who have been busily trying to get this "magnet" label, have let more important things go by the wayside. AND the only differences between an ADN, and a BSN is the those who got their BSN's did a few more classes in analytical processes, and research - that's it. And to be honest - many ADN's took these courses as their electives anyway in effort to be that much farther ahead if they went for their BSN's. There really is no GOOD reason why a new grad BSN, and a new grad RN/ADN should be treated differently, and to be honest - they BOTH had 4 years of school! You have to take all the same prerequisites - so if you are young just starting college - they had to take what amounts to 2 years of prerequisites to get into the nursing school where they got their ADN - its actually FOUR years. SAME as the BSN. NO difference. I've noticed that the list of classes I would have to take online for a BSN is repeating a lot of stuff I've already done. It's just money for a name. That's it.
I've worked at the same hospital my whole nursing career. It was recently magnet designated when I started in 2006. I can only speak from my experience, but in general I feel magnet designation is not much more than a marketing scam. When I first started at this hospital, there was a program in place that paid 100% for advanced nursing degrees, ADN to BSN, BSN to MSN etc. That's gone. They now only offer $3000/ year tuition reimbursement, which is minescule when it comes to the cost of a Bachelor's or Master's degree. The original premise behind magnet designation was to create a culture of exemplary nursing and retain nurses. After my hospital got it's second designation in 2010, it would no longer hire nurses with less than a bachelor's degree and shortly after eliminated the much more generous tuition reimbursement program. I'm sure the 2.1 million dollar cost of applying for magnet had no impact on that cut. It's also sad that the only nurses we tend to "retain" are those who are basically trapped by grandfathering. Yes..... those lowly ADN nurses who stay more out of fear than commitment to the organization, are the highest number of retained staff. My institution is a teaching hospital and a level I trauma center, so we get ALL the new grads. They stay long enough to get their experience and then move on to more lucrative assignments at non-magnet hospitals. Since we do have a serious retention problem we tend to hire agency nurses, most are great. I have nothing against them, but there is no stipulation on their degree and they have no impact on magnet designation with regards to retention. As a side note, when I started in 2006 my institution had zero agency nurses in my department, today we have at least 10 and that's a conservative guess. So at a magnet institution (or at least my magnet institution) you get less opportunity for education, less pay, more work, and a higher turnover rate. Magnet ....... the illusion of greatness.
abrezzle
5 Posts
interesting you say this about BSN. I actually did learn this in my BA courses.... to sum it up in a nutshell if its not .gov, .edu, than it better be a peer reviewed journal for info to be considered accurate aka Unbiased (although I may be missing one or 2 other sources) but I think you get my point to the general idea. But lets not give too much credit, its no BSN...