Dayton Children’s is a pediatric acute care children’s teaching hospital located in Dayton, Ohio. With approximately 3,800 employees and more than 300 physicians, the hospital has won numerous awards and appeared on multiple “Best of” lists since opening its doors in 1967.
Navigating the Magnet Recognition Process
Part of Dayton Children’s ongoing commitment to excellence involves receiving and maintaining industry-recognized certifications. One such certification is Magnet status, awarded by the Magnet Recognition Program of the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC). The Magnet Recognition Program recognizes healthcare organizations for quality patient care, nursing excellence, and innovations in professional nursing practice.
When achieving or recertifying Magnet status, a hospital must complete a rigorous and lengthy process that demands widespread participation from staff. Keeping this designation is essential to the hospital’s core business of serving the public, but the data-gathering demands place a heavy burden on both staff and administrators.
An Integrated Listening Approach, Courtesy of Perceptyx
In previous years, Dayton Children’s gathered the necessary data for Magnet redesignation using a different vendor’s survey that was not custom-built for this purpose. Not only was it long and completely separate from other employee surveys — triggering survey fatigue and low response rates — it took one to two months for Dayton Children’s to receive results.
Jayne Gmeiner, Vice President and Chief Nursing Executive for Dayton Children’s, knew there had to be a better way. When she learned that Perceptyx had partnered with the ANCC and received approval to map RN satisfaction questions specific to Magnet redesignation onto its surveys, she saw a major opportunity in 2022.
Perceptyx had conducted the hospital’s annual engagement survey for the past four years, delivering fast, easily searchable data and world-class insights. The ability to add an extra series of Magnet benchmark questions to that survey, targeting only those individuals whose responses were needed, offered the potential to save time and reduce the administrative burden for data processing and action planning.
For Gmeiner, the simplicity of the Perceptyx system on the front end for survey participants and its functionality on the back end for administrators like her was unmatched. “The way Perceptyx allows me to slice and dice the data — I was very interested in that. And getting those RN satisfaction questions on there that would meet the needs of the ANCC was worth pursuing. These extra questions deal with what we would call the fundamentals of quality: nurses’ perception of their practice, their ability to have the right resources around them to deliver care, their autonomy in their practice, and so on.”
Saving Employee Time and Acting Quickly on Insights
The addition of the Magnet-specific questions to the annual engagement survey showed an immediate return in terms of employee time saved. “I’d estimate the annual engagement survey itself took about 12 minutes to complete, with the additional questions for the nurses taking about two minutes and thirty seconds. The value of that, having everything in one package, one smooth step, was huge for us.”
But employee time wasn’t all that Dayton Children’s saved — the turnaround time to receive the results was significantly faster than with the previous survey vendor the hospital had been using. “With our previous RN satisfaction assessment process, we would wait between thirty and sixty days for results. This time around, our survey was conducted between May 8 and May 22. Perceptyx got us our results by the second week in June.”
Most importantly, Perceptyx’s expanded engagement survey actually engaged a majority of employees. “When we used a different model for the RN engagement satisfaction survey last year, our survey response rate was very low — around 32%. Here, the survey response rate from our nursing team was 74%. The end user, who might be highly mobile and busy, can complete the survey on their phone — it’s easy for them, a seamless process. When you get 74% participation in the survey, you feel like you can really use the data to drive meaningful action planning.”
Gmeiner is a veteran of the healthcare industry, and she knows a winning product — and partnership — when she sees one. “Perceptyx achieved a big leap through its work with the ANCC. That’s a huge leap, not just for us, but for more than 400 Magnet hospitals internationally. I jumped at the opportunity when I saw that Perceptyx could do it, and I can say for a fact that it worked.”
Perceptyx Can Help Your Organization Address the Magnet Designation Process
Perceptyx helped Jayne Gmeiner see the way forward — in this case, to a much easier way to gather information for the Magnet redesignation process. Gmeiner considers the pilot a success. “I would recommend Perceptyx to my Chief Nursing Officer colleagues across the country. If you want a smooth process for engaging your staff and quickly receiving the information you gather, this is a great product. And the bonus here is that if you’re a Magnet organization and required by the ANCC to get an endorsed RN engagement survey tool, Perceptyx also provides that.”
Perceptyx has deep expertise in helping healthcare organizations apply employee listening and people analytics to achieve a world-class employee experience. To read the full story of how we supported Dayton Children’s, click here. For more information on how your healthcare organization can utilize our platform and products to help support Magnet designation, safety, employee well-being, and more, schedule a meeting with a member of our team.