ABU DHABI — The Shaikh Khalifa Medical City aims to be the first hospital in the Middle East to receive Magnet accreditation, an internationally-recognised award for nursing excellence and leadership.

Magnet is awarded by the accrediting body in the US, the American Nurses Credentialing Centre (ANCC), to hospitals that meet their stringent criteria.

At present only about 330 hospitals in the US have this award and three internationally — two in Australia and one in New Zealand.

“We have been preparing for the Magnet accreditation for the last four years and we hope to be the first in the region to receive the accreditation when the credential inspectors come in 2010,” Linda Haskins, Director of Nursing at SKMC told Khaleej Times on the sidelines of the International Nursing Leadership and Magnet Excellence Conference in Abu Dhabi.

According to Haskins, the criteria for the excellence accreditation includes transformational leadership, structured empowerment, knowledge and innovation, quality and?professional development.

“We need to prove to the American credential inspectors when they come that we have attained those standards,” said Haskins.

Nurses at SKMC are required to complete 20 continuous nursing education annually, achieve mandatory competencies, undergo competency training and self-learning packages according to specialities and pass the annual performance evaluation.

“We are empowering our staff with a lot of professional development?and education.

“We keep our staff happy and we have a retention strategy,”?Haskins said.

She added that SKMC has a very low staff turnover of less than one per cent and that requirements for?additional nurses are also below?six per cent.

SKMC has around 1,900 nurses from over 36 countries including Philippines, Malaysia, Korea, Jordan, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, US and Canada.

By Staff Reporter

© Khaleej Times 2009

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