• E-mail
• Print
• RSS

Inside best practice: Image of nursing: Impassioned advocate for nursing excellence

HCPro's Weekly Update on the ANCC Magnet Recognition Program®*, January 5, 2010

Editor's note: Each year, HealthLeaders Media selects 20 people who are making a positive difference in healthcare. They range from high-profile names who foster big changes to people whose names may not be familiar, but whose contributions to healthcare have inspired positive change. HCPro's Advisor to the ANCC Magnet Recognition Program® is delighted to announce that one of our long-term contributors has been chosen as one of the 2009 HealthLeaders 20, and here's an in-depth look at why.

Barbara J. Hannon, RN, MSN, CPHQ, ANCC Magnet Recognition Program® (MRP) coordinator at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City, likes to laughingly point out that rural, corn-growing Iowa doesn't have a beach or mountains or other such high-profile attractions that entice nurses to practice in other states. But what the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics does have is a rich MRP culture. It's this culture of nursing excellence—powered by the force of nature that is Hannon—that draws nurses and keeps them there. And Hannon is on a mission to help every nurse she encounters enjoy this benefit, too.

"One of the reasons that I will go anywhere and talk to anyone about MRP is that I really want every hospital on the face of this earth to get designated," she says.

The ethos behind MRP "is making the environment of nursing better," Hannon says. "Designation requires that hospitals have participatory scheduling, no mandatory overtime, that they involve nurses in shared governance, that they help nurses use evidence in their practice. All the things that MRP requires make life better for nurses in the hospitals. And because I've been a nurse for 34 years, I know the way it used to be; and it used to be terrible."

Source: This excerpt is from the January issue of HCPro's Advisor to the ANCC Magnet Recognition Program®. Don't have a subscription? Take a look at the benefits of becoming a member of HCPro's Resource Center for the ANCC Magnet Recognition Program®.

• E-mail to a Colleague
• Print
• RSS
• Archive