Magnet recognition represents the highest standard in nursing excellence, offering a roadmap that supports nurses at every stage while ensuring patients receive the very best care.

ChristianaCare, headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, is a major nonprofit health system with more than 1,400 beds and 4,000 nurses. ChristianaCare recently celebrated its fourth Magnet designation for Christiana and Wilmington Hospitals, Ambulatory Services and ChristianaCare HomeHealth. The health system first achieved this milestone in 2010, and went on to earn redesignations in 2015, 2020, and now 2025. In the last two redesignations, CipherHealth supported their efforts through customized scripts and data-driven leadership rounding.   

We spoke with Maria Brown, MSN, RN, PCCN, CNL, NEA-BC, Lead Nursing Professional Excellence Manager at ChristianaCare, about how her team used the platform to bring Magnet education to more nurses and sustain a culture of excellence across the organization.

Scaling Magnet preparedness 

As the team at ChristianaCare readied for redesignation, they needed a way to efficiently reach all areas and roles. They were already using CipherHealth for leadership and nursing bundle rounding when Brown had the idea to expand its use. 

She said, “Anybody can use it, right? Anybody that has access can use it… and it’s not just our group of maybe ten. It could be everybody that we partner with for Magnet in each area.”

As such, the Nursing Excellence team could include more participants—especially the Nursing Excellence Ambassadors who support area readiness. Ambassadors used CipherHealth to round with staff during downtime, meetings, and council sessions, helping ensure that Magnet knowledge reached everyone. 

Rounding scripts to create dialogue

To connect with staff, ChristianaCare built a series of structured rounding scripts. Each script translated Magnet principles into practical questions, covering topics like professional practice, leadership, empowerment, outcomes, and innovation. This gave teams a repeatable framework to discuss their work, share examples, and connect daily practice to Magnet standards.

Importantly, the scripts also gave nurses a chance to pause and reflect on their own practice. For many, the conversations were about seeing how their daily work tied into bigger goals such as professional advancement on the clinical ladder or area outcomes.

Brown emphasized how collaboration inside ChristianaCare made the scripts more meaningful. “We partnered with our patient experience team, partnered with [CipherHealth], and came up with a script outlining Magnet model component questions that we feel like our nurses should know,” she said. 

Examples of questions included:

• Describe the Nursing Professional Practice Model.
• How is data used on your unit/area to improve patient outcomes?
• Can you briefly describe what Magnet® designation means to you?
• How do you apply Relationship Based Care to yourself, your patients, your colleagues, and community?
• What are some examples of initiatives or projects that have been completed in your area? Which are you most proud of and why?

Brown noted that the process itself was straightforward. “It was very easy to create the scripts and work with the team. We would send changes, and Cipher would send us the script back. They’d say, ‘Take a look at it and we’ll open it for you tomorrow morning,” she said. 

Tracking progress with clear data

With all scripts and data housed in one place, the team could easily track participation, see which areas were excelling, and spot areas that needed more support. 

Brown shared that Nursing Excellence Ambassadors, Nursing Excellence Experts, and leaders all had access to the same dashboards, making it simple to review and celebrate progress. “We were able to look at our top rounders and recognize them. We’d look at the areas that had opportunities for rounding, and the ones that were knocking it out of the park,” she said.

Ultimately, the data helped the team identify where staff felt confident and where additional education or clarification was needed. 

Insights from CipherHealth, in conjunction with other data sources, informed quarterly Nursing Excellence retreats, where the team celebrated participation, shared updates, recognized progress across areas, and planned next steps.

Keeping the momentum going

As ChristianaCare looks ahead on its Magnet journey, the team continues to refine how they use CipherHealth. 

Brown shared that regular updates to the scripts keep the process relevant and engaging as leaders, teams, and priorities evolve. “Things change all the time,” she said. “So it was a really easy process to update our scripts.”

That flexibility has helped the Nursing Excellence team adapt to organizational change while keeping Magnet readiness part of daily practice. They’ve even found creative ways to make learning more interactive, like using data from rounding to design a virtual escape room that turned Magnet education into a collaborative challenge. 

“It was a really innovative and dynamic way to use the data that we received,” Brown said. “Everybody loved doing the escape room.”

With the technology at hand, nurse leaders can keep connecting the dots between feedback, education, and improvement. ChristianaCare also plans to expand its use of CipherHealth to it’s newest hospital campus pursuing its own Pathway to Excellence journey. 

“We’re definitely going to continue to use Cipher,” Brown said. “We can just keep improving upon it each year.”