Impact of MAGNET hospital designation on nursing culture: an integrative review

Background: Organisational culture is a critical part of a positive and productive working environment and often presents as an area of ongoing development. The MAGNET recognition program awards recognition to organisations that have positive organisational cultures that meet the standards and criteria. However, the broad impact of MAGNET on hospital culture outside of America remains unclear.Objective: In this study, we explore the impact of MAGNET designation on organisational culture within the nursing context.Methods: An integrative literature review was performed using a systematic search of Medline (Ovid), Embase (Elsevier) and the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL Ebsco) databases and a combination of subject headings and key words for organizational culture, organizational change and MAGNET hospital, as well as reference chaining was conducted. Using a constant comparative process key categories, themes and subthemes emerged.Results: Twenty-nine key studies were identified and were evaluated utilising two study quality appraisal tools; National Health and Medical Research Council (NH&MRC) levels of evidence and the Polit and Beck critical appraisal tool. Three key categories emerged from the data: (1) nurse practice environment; (2) structure and process models; (3) measurement scales. A key finding was that MAGNET designation appears to enhance organisational culture for nurses and the framework used to introduce MAGNET helps to empower nurses to direct organisational culture in their facility.Conclusion and Implications for Nursing and Health Policy: MAGNET appears to have a positive impact on organisational culture, particularly for nurses. However, lack of standardised evaluation tools used to assess organisational culture associated with MAGNET designation limits comparability of the studies. Generally, the quality of evidence used to develop recommendations was poor to very poor. More, well designed studies undertaken outside of the USA are required.Impact Statement: An in-depth integrative review exploring the impact of MAGNET designation on organisational culture has not been undertaken. In this paper, we have used an integrative review methodology to identify, examine, thematically group and critically evaluate published literature around the impact of MAGNET designation on organisational culture within designated hospitals.