Last month, we ventured further into the UAMS Magnet Journey than we have ever been! Our Magnet Writing Team has been busy writing up the stories of Nursing Excellence from across UAMS Health. We are inspired to read about your socially/culturally sensitive care, your innovative ideas to address complex problems, how you work with interprofessional teams, and use evidence-based practices to care for special patient populations. Your writing team has completed 10 stories and is currently working on 20 more! So far we have written about the:
- Teddy Bear Clinic from UAMS East Helena, a socially sensitive care initiative to promote pediatric wellness check ups
- Gift of Sight from perioperative services, a volunteer, community initiative that aligns with Healthy People 2030
- PIV Infiltration Care and Management, a nursing driven protocol from NICU that promotes the autonomy of nurses to practice within their full scope
- Organizational recognition of the STROKE Program and Team at UAMS
- Centering Pregnancy Research Study, with Penny Ward, WISL Ambulatory Nursing Director as Co-Primary Investigator
- Nurture the Nurse retreats, an example of Trenda Ray, UAMS Chief Nursing Officer, advocating for resources to promote nurse wellbeing
- Covid Vaccination clinic, a service offered to the community by Integrated Medicine Service Line, utilizing volunteer staff
We look forward to continually sharing these stories with your teams so you can celebrate Nursing Excellence in your areas, clinics, units, departments, and service lines.
Also last month, for the first time since February 2020, we saw all Nursing Sensitive Indicators (NSIs, a measure of nursing quality) and Patient Satisfaction survey results outperform the Magnet requirements. This is an amazing accomplishment by the nurses and leadership teams providing direct care to patients, in addition to our Quality and Patient Experience offices, in the improvement initiatives that deliver better care and experience to our patients. This includes data from the time period during the height of the COVID pandemic, which was an extremely difficult time for frontline caregivers.
| Measure | NSI’s | Patient Satisfaction |
|---|---|---|
| Nursing Excellence Performance | Outperforming | Outperforming |
| Nursing Excellence Summary | 94% of units outperform in a majority of quarters for a majority of NSI’s reported. | 73% of units outperform in a majority of domains reporting. |
| Magnet Performance | Inpatient and Ambulatory outperforming. | Inpatient and Ambulatory outperforming. |
| Magnet Summary | >50% of eligible units perform in 4 of 4 inpatient measures and 2 of 2 ambulatory measures. | >50% of eligible units perform in 4 of 4 selected domains for inpatient units and 4 of 4 domains for ambulatory settings. |
Next month, we will look at the results from the RN Engagement questions that you answered as part of the UAMS Employee Engagement survey from Gallup. These engagement scores are vital to the success of our Magnet Journey. Your survey answers provide valuable insight to UAMS Leadership about your perceptions of nursing care, autonomy, teamwork, interprofessional collaboration, professional development, and staffing and resources. In the coming months, your units will engage in some targeted initiatives to address any deficiencies in these categories, and there will be future opportunities to submit your responses to these initiatives.
Overall, UAMS leadership is amazed at your commitment to excellent patient care and your achievements in quality and patient experience. Every day you overcome challenges to care for patients as a team. It is a privilege to lead you in the journey that will culminate in the designation of Magnet – You deserve it!
