Abstract

Magnet Hospitals are healthcare environments that have recognized excellence in nursing care. These accredited Magnet Hospitals, a term coined in the early 1980's, were seen to have the ability to attract nurses. These hospitals have quantitatively documented greater patient satisfaction, greater nurse autonomy, lower incidence of nursing burnout and greater nursing retention. As healthcare faces one of its most significant nursing shortages, Magnet Hospitals illustrate an organizational and corporate strategy that aims to recognize nursing and hopefully retain and recruit nurses during this challenging time.

While there are numerous quantitative studies that examine aspects of Magnet Hospitals such as nursing autonomy in practice, organizational hospital structure, lower nurse burnout and greater nurse retention, there remain few studies that have examined this workplace environment from a qualitative perspective.

The use of nursing's voice in this study was meant to qualitatively examine what it means for the participants to be working at an accredited Magnet Hospital. Voice implies autonomy, self-awareness, and power. The concept of voice dovetails into the Magnet Hospital literature as it provides a different lens to see what it means for the nurses who work within this setting. Voice is imperative to examine in the context of a Magnet Hospital as it helped give insight to what the nurses' perceptions were at one particular Magnet Hospital and what they viewed as important to their work at that hospital.

The findings revealed that the nurses did not feel that their voice was heard within this Magnet Hospital. There were several consistencies that arose from the conversations with the participants which include: importance of the nurse manager, physician-nurserelations, staffing concerns, committee structure, and working within the Magnet Hospital itself. Based upon these themes, several implications for nursing, human research and development, and adult education are discussed.

Description

This dissertation has also been disseminated through the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. Dissertation/thesis number: 3193155; ProQuest document ID: 305456370. The author still retains copyright.

Author Details

Julie A. Beck, EdD, MSN, RN, Chief Nursing Officer

Sigma Membership

Omega Eta

Type

Dissertation

Format Type

Text-based Document

Study Design/Type

Phenomenology

Research Approach

Qualitative Research

Keywords:

Nurse Autonomy, Perceptions of Nurses, Workplace Experiences, Organizational Culture

Advisor

Daniele Flannery

Second Advisor

Edward Taylor

Third Advisor

Helen Hendy

Fourth Advisor

Ian Baptiste

Degree

Doctoral-Other

Degree Grantor

The Pennsylvania State University

Degree Year

2005

Rights Holder

All rights reserved by the author(s) and/or publisher(s) listed in this item record unless relinquished in whole or part by a rights notation or a Creative Commons License present in this item record.

All permission requests should be directed accordingly and not to the Sigma Repository.

All submitting authors or publishers have affirmed that when using material in their work where they do not own copyright, they have obtained permission of the copyright holder prior to submission and the rights holder has been acknowledged as necessary.

Review Type

None: Degree-based Submission

Acquisition

Proxy-submission

Date of Issue

2022-02-15

Full Text of Presentation

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