The 2026 Magnet® & Pathway® Conference

Every October, the nursing leaders who shape this profession gather in one place, not to swap business cards, but to wrestle with the hardest questions in the field. Where is nursing headed? What does workforce excellence actually look like? And how do we close the gap between the systems we have and the ones our teams deserve?

The 2026 Magnet & Pathway^® Conference brings that conversation to Chicago, October 29–31, at McCormick Place. Recognized as the largest conference dedicated to professional nursing, this year’s event celebrates The Power of Nurses^® while offering attendees 148 concurrent sessions, up to 50 ANCC contact hours, and a program designed to push nursing leadership thinking forward, not just confirm what you already know.

Creative Health Care Insight built the MyCHCI platform specifically for the documentation, tracking, and workforce development challenges that nursing leaders face every day. CHCI is the only platform with the legal rights to deliver the Donna Wright Competency Assessment Model™ digitally and the only platform legally authorized to offer TSAM^® education and consulting services paired with our comprehensive competency suite, a distinction that matters deeply to the organizations attending this conference.

 If you’re pursuing or maintaining Magnet^® or Pathway to Excellence^® recognition, this is the kind of infrastructure that makes your work measurable, not just meaningful.

What to Expect at the 2026 Conference in Chicago

This year’s event at McCormick Place sets the stage for the profession’s most significant annual gathering. So what’s on the agenda that’s worth your time?

The conference program includes:

• 148 concurrent sessions spanning clinical excellence, workforce strategy, leadership development, and organizational culture
• Up to 50 contact hours – a meaningful return on three days away from your organization
• Presentations from Magnet^®-recognized and Pathway to Excellence®-designated organizations sharing what’s actually working in the real world
• General session keynotes from Robin Roberts, co-anchor of ABC’s Good Morning America, and leadership coach and entrepreneur Jesse Israel
• Exhibit hall access October 29–30, featuring vendors and partners aligned with the conference’s focus on nursing excellence

The exhibit hall is where ideas meet implementation. It’s where you can move from inspired to informed, and where you’ll find Creative Health Care Insight (CHCI) at Booth 1254.

CHCI Is Exhibiting — Here’s What to Expect at Booth 1254

We’re returning to the Magnet^® & Pathway^® Conference this year, and we can’t wait.

CEO Aaron Garron and CTO Thomas Ross will both be on-site to meet with attendees, answer your questions, and walk you through what MyCHCI can do for your organization. Whether you’ve been following CHCI for years or you’re encountering us for the first time, there’s something at Booth 1254 worth stopping for.

Here’s what you’ll find:

• A live look at MyCHCI, including the Initial Competency Component, which is able to be paired with our 100% exclusive TSAM^® Education and Consulting Services, and the Ongoing Competency Component built around the Donna Wright Competency Assessment Model™
• Conversation about how the platform supports ANCC documentation requirements for Magnet^® and Pathway to Excellence^® designations (CHCI’s products are neither sponsored nor endorsed by ANCC)
• An all-new booth presence, a fresh look we’ve been building toward and genuinely can’t wait to reveal!
• Plenty of freebies and giveaways for everyone who stops by
• A ‘golden ticket’ raffle where one winner takes home a $15,000 gift card

That last one isn’t a typo. Fifteen thousand dollars. Add Booth 1254 to your itinerary.

Client Spotlight

A nurse educator at a mid-sized regional health system attended the Magnet^® & Pathway^® Conference two years ago with a familiar problem: her competency tracking system was a patchwork of spreadsheets, and every ANCC submission cycle left her team exhausted. She stopped by a CHCI exhibit, skeptical. She’d heard “automated competency management” before and seen platforms that did not digitize the Donna Wright Competency Assessment Model™ as no other organization has the legal capabilities to do so. What surprised her was the conversation – not a sales pitch, but a walkthrough of how the Donna Wright Competency Assessment Model™ actually works inside MyCHCI.

Why This Conference Matters for Nursing Leaders Right Now

This isn’t just a credentialing event. It’s a pulse check on the profession.

The organizations presenting at this conference, Magnet^®-recognized hospitals and Pathway to Excellence^®-designated systems, are the ones that have done the hard work of building cultures where nurses stay, grow, and lead. That’s not accidental. It requires structure. Documentation. Systems that actually support professional development rather than just measuring it after the fact.

The 2026 conference theme, The Power of Nurses^®, lands at a moment when that power is both undeniable and under enormous pressure. Nurse turnover continues to strain health systems at every level. The cost of replacing a single RN, when you account for recruitment, agency coverage, and productivity loss, runs between $35,000 and $60,000. Professional development infrastructure isn’t a nice-to-have anymore. It’s a retention strategy. Full stop.

For the nursing leaders attending this conference, the sessions on workforce analytics, orientation redesign, career advancement, and peer development aren’t abstract. They’re operational. And what gets built in October shows up in first-year nurse retention numbers the following spring.

The Conference at a Glance

This table covers the core logistics. But the real return on attending this conference doesn’t show up in a spreadsheet, it shows up in your team’s next year.

Client Spotlight

A director of nursing operations from a community hospital attended the Magnet^® & Pathway^® Conference for the first time last year, having just been charged with leading her organization’s initial Pathway to Excellence^® application. She was overwhelmed and she’ll tell you so. She spent an afternoon in the exhibit hall, specifically looking for vendors who understood the documentation requirements – not just generically, but with specificity about what ANCC actually needs. Her conversation at the CHCI booth was different from others she’d had that day. The team could speak to the DDCT^® and ODF^® export formats by name. They knew why the Demographic Data Collection Component existed and what it solved. She requested a follow-up demo the following week.

What MyCHCI Brings to the Conversation

If you’re attending the 2026 Magnet^® & Pathway^® Conference, you’re already thinking seriously about nursing excellence. You’re probably also thinking about what’s still broken in your organization – the documentation gaps, the orientation checklists that don’t reflect how nurses actually develop, the Magnet^® preparation process that runs on spreadsheets and goodwill.

MyCHCI was built to address exactly that gap. Here’s what the platform does:

• Ongoing Competency Component: Automates the Donna Wright Competency Assessment Model™ — the only platform in health care authorized to do so digitally. Moves organizations from checking boxes to validating what actually matters.
• Initial Competency Component – Orientation Support: Structures new hire onboarding (tiered or traditional) with real-time progress tracking for preceptors and managers. Reduces the documentation burden on nurses who are already managing full clinical loads. CHCI clients implementing TSAM^® also receive EXCLUSIVE access to our TSAM^® education and consulting services with Dr. Ellen Joswiak, co-innovator of the Tiered Skills Acquisition Model and CHCI’s Chief Clinical Education Consultant.
• Professional Portfolio Suite: Automates the data collection and reporting that Magnet^® and Pathway to Excellence^® submissions require – including ANCC-formatted exports for the DDCT^® and ODF^®. (CHCI’s products are neither sponsored nor endorsed by ANCC.)
• Peer Feedback Component: Gives organizations a structured way to collect, document, and act on peer feedback – a recognized element of Magnet^® culture that most hospitals have no systematic way to support.
• Mentoring and Succession Planning: One of the newest additions to the CHCI platform, CHCI now offers an integrated approach to mentoring and succession planning within a single, unified platform – designed to simplify program management while delivering meaningful, measurable outcomes. Organizations can build flexible, unlimited mentoring programs, including group mentoring, while easily tracking goals, hours, and session activity through structured or customizable templates. 

Every component works as a standalone or as part of an integrated system. You don’t have to overhaul everything at once. That’s a deliberate design choice – and one that we will help you through every step of the way as a strategic partner, because CHCI knows how healthcare organizations actually operate.

What Sets Creative Health Care Insight Apart at This Conference

There are a lot of vendors in exhibit halls. Most of them will tell you they support Magnet^®. Here’s what makes CHCI different, and why it’s worth your time to stop at Booth 1254.

The Donna Wright Competency Assessment Model™ is the recognized standard in nursing competency assessment. Donna Wright’s book on the subject has been translated into other languages and remains the definitive reference in the field. The partnership between Donna Wright and CHCI isn’t a co-marketing arrangement, she co-designed the Ongoing Competency Component with our leadership team. Her model is embedded in the platform itself. No other software can offer that. It’s a contractual exclusivity, not a marketing claim.

The CHCI team is led by people who have worked in healthcare, not just sold to it. Thomas Ross, CTO, brings a combination of technical precision and operational discipline earned through 13 years of military service, including multiple deployments and a Bronze Star. Aaron Garner, CEO, has spent over two decades in healthcare business strategy. They don’t talk about nursing from the outside. They understand the systems that nursing leaders are trying to build and protect.

In October 2025, CHCI was selected by the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) as a preferred competency management provider, a third-party validation from one of nursing’s most credible professional bodies, bringing AACN’s Competence Framework for Progressive and Critical Care directly into the MyCHCI platform.

That’s the company you’ll meet at Booth 1254.

Not sure you want to wait until the Magnet^® and Pathway^® Conference to learn more? Schedule a demo with us today to start getting to know the CHCI platform, and the CHCI difference.

---

Supporting Articles

• Mentoring for Magnet Recognition: Strengthening Nursing Excellence Through Automation — Explores how structured mentoring supports Magnet^® recognition and how automated tools make that structure sustainable for nursing leaders.
• Digitizing the Wright Competency Assessment Model™: Your Health Care Team’s Key to Success — A deep-dive into what it actually means to automate the Donna Wright Competency Assessment Model™ and why most platforms can’t do it.
• Healthcare Competency Management: the Foundation of Workforce Excellence — Covers the principles behind meaningful competency management and how organizations move from compliance-focused tracking to genuinely validated practice.
• Nurse Retention in 2026: What Healthcare Organizations Are Doing Differently — Examines the retention strategies that health systems are investing in right now — and the role professional development infrastructure plays in making nurses stay.
• Competency-based Orientation in Healthcare: Moving Beyond Checklists to Competence — A practical look at what competency-based orientation actually requires and how tiered frameworks change the new hire experience.

---

Frequently Asked Questions

MAGNET®, Magnet Recognition Program®, ANCC Magnet Recognition®, Journey to Magnet Excellence®, Pathway to Excellence® Program, Pathway to Excellence in Long Term Care®, Demographic Data Collection Tool®, DDCT®, Practice Transition Accreditation Program® (PTAP) are registered trademarks of the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC). The products and services of Creative Health Care Management are neither sponsored nor endorsed by ANCC. All rights reserved. The content presented in here is the expressed opinion of the author/presenter and not that of the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC).