Magnet Designation Places Cook Children's Nurses Among Top 5 Percent in the Country

Cook Children’s nursing staff is recognized as one of the finest in the nation and became the first free-standing children’s hospital in the United States to gain the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Magnet designation in 2006.

Lisa Farmer wanted to be a nurse since she was 3 years old, watching her father help people as a clinical psychologist. She saw firsthand how a nurse helps when she was treated for scoliosis as a high school student.

Lara Smith also faced back issues brought on by scoliosis as a teenager. A nurse from Canada named Sandy treated her, and Smith still remembers the way Sandy cared for her.

Kristie Denney grew up with a Cook Children’s nurse as a role model. Her stepmother was a surgery nurse, and Denney followed in her stepmother’s footsteps when she also became a nurse at Cook Children’s.

Today, Farmer, Smith, and Denney serve as influences of their own, with nearly 30 years of experience among them. Their hospital, Cook Children’s, is recognized as one of the finest in the nation and became the first free-standing children’s hospital in the United States to gain the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Magnet designation in 2006.

Only 5 percent of hospitals in the country hold this coveted recognition, which is one of the most prestigious honors a hospital and nursing staff can achieve. ANCC, a subsidiary of the American Nurses Association, developed the Magnet program to recognize health care organizations that provide the very best in nursing care.

“Congratulations to the distinguished nursing staff of Cook Children's for this prestigious honor. They have shown true excellence in practice and fulfill our promise to every child, every day. They inspire so many with their unwavering dedication and commitment to providing the very highest quality of care possible for their young patients,” said Rick Merrill, president and CEO of Cook Children’s. "These fine men and women are led by their hearts, and parents know that our nursing family will care for their sick children as if they were their own."

As members of the Magnet Council, Denney, Farmer, and Smith are working on renewing Cook Children’s elite status for 2010.

Farmer, a charge nurse and therapist in inpatient psychiatry, brings a unique experience because her child has been a patient at Cook Children’s for two surgeries. “I was so impressed with the facility, I went back got my master’s and watched the web site for two years,” Farmer said. “The first opportunity I got, I interviewed. I wanted to get my foot in the door. I was bound and determined.”

Farmer said she is impressed with the way nurses are treated at Cook Children’s, with an emphasis on continuing education and improving their professional career status.

Smith, who has been at Cook Children’s for 19 years, understands the lack of turnover because her fellow nurses are happy and want to stay with the system.

“We have such a high-quality nursing staff,” Smith, a nurse in the Special Procedure Unit, said. “Families feel it. A parent the other day put it best when she said, ‘I can tell you are the type of person that this is not just a job. This is your life.’”

Denney, a nurse in the Pediatric ICU, has worked at Cook Children’s for almost eight years. She said the nurses at Cook Children’s approach each day with the goals of making things better for the families they care for and of treating those children as if they were their own. While she has always known how special the nurses at Cook Children’s are, Denney said the Magnet recognition only proves it.

“It reaffirms everything I’ve always thought,” Denney said. “It tells people all over the nation, we have the most awesome nurses at Cook Children’s.”

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