Jim Wente, CHE, CPA, President and Chief Executive Officer

Good morning. I want to thank all of you for taking time away from your busy schedules to join us today as we share some good news with you. Without further ado, I would like to call on Karen Hendrickson, vice president and chief nursing officer to deliver that news.

Karen Hendrickson, Ed.D, R.N., CNAA, Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer

Thank you, Jim. Shortly after 8:30 this morning, the phone you see beside me rang. The caller was Dr. Brenda Kelly, Chairperson of the Magnet Commission in Silver Springs, Maryland. Before a room literally packed with Southeast nurses, Brenda informed us that Southeast Missouri Hospital has been awarded the Magnet Nursing Services Recognition Award. It was truly an awesome moment in the history of Southeast Missouri Hospital.

This recognition accorded by the American Nurses Credentialing Center, a branch of the American Nurses Association, is the nation’s highest honor a hospital can receive for nursing care.

Southeast is the fourth hospital in Missouri, and the first outside a metropolitan area of the state, to achieve Magnet designation.

In Missouri, Children’s Mercy Hospital and Clinics and St. Joseph Health Center, both in Kansas City, and Barnes Jewish Christian in St. Louis, are the only other Magnet hospitals.

From left, Narvol Randol, chairman of the Board; Jim Wente, president and CEO, and Karen Hendrickson, chief nursing officer make the announcement.

In our neighboring states of Illinois and Kentucky, Magnet hospitals are found in Geneva, Peoria and Chicago, Illinois, and Lexington and Louisville, Kentucky.

The recognition we received today is not an honor just for nurses. It is an honor for the entire Hospital. It took every one of our 1,820 employees working together, in a collaborative environment, to achieve Magnet status.

Our Magnet journey began in early 2003. Leading us along the path was Sharon Stinson, Director of Patient Care Services. I want to personally commend and thank Sharon for her tireless efforts in overseeing the collection and preparation of data submitted as part of the official Magnet application to comply with 14 standards, or "forces of magnetism," required by the American Nurses Credentialing Center. You see before you (the Magnet application will be on display) the 2,800 pages weighing more than 50 pounds which were submitted to the Magnet commission earlier this year.

In mid-summer, we learned that documentation of those 14 standards received an excellent rating with no revisions. That merited us a site visit by Magnet surveyors, who are practicing nurse administrators from throughout the country.
Our three-day site visit took place in July. During that visit, surveyors interviewed more than 350 of Southeast’s nearly 500 nurses, and also met with many other Hospital departments, administrators, Board of Trustees members and more than a dozen community leaders, some of whom are with us today.

A vital part of quality care is a hospital’s ability to attract and retain the best nursing professionals. Therein lies the term "magnet."

Attaining Magnet designation means that Southeast has created an environment that supports nursing practice and focuses on autonomy, decision-making at the bedside, nursing involvement in determining the nursing work environment, professional leadership and career development, and strong, pro-active nursing leadership.
This positively impacts patient outcomes as well as nursing recruitment and retention, both of which are of vital concern nationwide.

Nursing shortages have plagued the healthcare industry in general and hospitals in particular throughout the modern era. We are once again in the midst of a nursing shortage, but this one is different from others. It is global in nature, and is predicted to be much more severe because of the surge in our aging population of both nurses and patients.
We know the old solutions will not work in dealing with this new shortage, which is expected to grow to 500,000 over the next four years. We also know that work environments can be created that will act as magnets for the nurses of today and tomorrow.

Studies have shown that Magnet hospitals have higher patient satisfaction rates than non-Magnet hospitals; that patient outcomes are better; that nurse to patient ratios are more favorable; and that staff turnover is lower.

To earn Magnet designation is a great honor, and one which we are proud to share with you. But earning Magnet status doesn’t change who we are. It reaffirms the hard work and dedication of our entire staff and reinforces the core values by which we all do our jobs every day.

Jim Wente:

I just want to say that receiving Magnet designation today confirms my long-held belief that, at Southeast, patient care is at the heart of everything we do.

The professionalism and dedication demonstrated by our nursing staff on a daily basis set Southeast’s nursing team apart from others.

We are privileged to share this honor with just over 2 percent of the nation’s hospitals. Out of the more than 6,000 hospitals in the United States, only 126 are Magnet hospitals.

Research also documents that a high quality nursing staff is one of the most important attributes in attracting high quality physicians. That has certainly proved to be true here at Southeast.

A recent article in the Reader’s Digest about the quality of U.S. hospitals noted, "If you can easily check into a Magnet hospital, you’d be foolish not to."

Thanks to the dedication and professionalism of Southeast’s nurses, you now have that facility – though we certainly hope you don’t have to check in anytime soon.

Now, I would like to ask our Board of Trustees Chairman Narvol Randol to make just a few remarks.

Narvol Randol:

Thank you, Jim. On behalf of the Board of Trustees, it is a pleasure to congratulate Southeast’s nurses and the entire Hospital staff for bringing this honor to Cape Girardeau.

Southeast’s nurses are, in my opinion, the best. The care they have given my family rivals none.

To meet the exacting standards required for Magnet designation, a Hospital must demonstrate many things, including how everyone successfully works together to benefit patients and families being served.

Very few healthcare organizations have been able to accomplish putting all these elements together successfully and that’s why receiving Magnet status is held in such high regard in the healthcare industry.

So…once again…congratulations!

Nurses received their Magnet pins at a special ceremony