From Magnet and beyond: One step at a time

In the early 1980s, during a significant nursing shortage, the Governing Council of the American Academy of Nursing appointed a Task Force on Nursing Practice in Hospitals “to examine characteristics of systems impeding and/or facilitating professional nursing practice in hospitals.”1 The task force was charged with identifying variables in the hospital environment that resulted in the attraction and retention of professional nurses. A rigorous screening process resulted in the study of 41 Magnet hospitals and ultimately the identification of common characteristics among those hospitals. The findings from that study provided the scientific basis for the standards incorporated into the Magnet Recognition Program for Excellence in Nursing Services developed by the American Nurses Credentialing Center in 1994.