Magnet Conference

This week I was sent by my nurse manager to attend a conference through our hospital. The conference was about our journey in becoming a magnet accredited hospital. Magnet accreditation is specific to nursing and was originally created to prevent nursing shortages and increase retention rates for nursing in hospitals. If a health care organization is magnet accredited it signifies that the facility has better patient outcomes and exemplary nursing care.

In short if it is magnet certified... you want to work there and you want to get care there.

It was a two day conference with a ton of information that I'm still processing through. Unfortunately, I left with more questions than answers and in many ways felt like it was management's "Hoo rah!" as opposed to a championing of staff nurses becoming involved in this process. (The whole premise of the magnet system is about self governance, higher autonomy and a decentralized organizational structure.)

At any rate, I'm exhausted and to top it all off I had to switch my sleep schedule to go to it (us night shift folks don't like getting up early... it's why we work nights) and now its 4am and I have to work a 12 hour day shift today.     *sigh*

Oh well. When things become exhausting I just take a look at these and I close my eyes and picture myself here 

or maybe here

and life seems a little bit better... quieter after that.

Happy Friday Friends! The weekend is almost here!