The 2-1 win at Dean Court has Ipswich nine points from safety.
“There’s no other version of wins for us in the Premier League other than hard-fought, that’s for sure,” McKenna said.
“I know the effort that’s gone into the performance, certainly in that capacity. I think we deserved it.
“The desire that we showed, the defensive resilience that we showed. Bournemouth are always going to put you under pressure because they put a lot of bodies and the ball in the box really quickly, but we didn’t give up too many clear chances, to be honest.
“And then we executed really well on a couple of big moments, especially the first goal, but especially the second goal.
“I think the level of that goal, to come here and do that, there are very few teams who have scored a goal like that because they’re so hard to play through. It’s so hard to start a move with your goalkeeper and finish it in a clean manner, so it was fantastic execution and it shows real growth in the team to do that at 1-0 up.
“I think earlier in the season, we probably would have been hanging on at that phase instead of putting a move together and getting a second goal.
“I think in many aspects I think we deserved it but I’m saying it, of course, from the Ipswich side of the coin.”
An upbeat McKenna also said: “Similar to the little run we had earlier in the season, you can get a run like that in this league if you get one or two of your close games wrong.
“So to get the win is nice for us for tonight, but it’s not like we’re going to dwell on it for too long because we know we’ve got a big game on Saturday.
“That’s where the focus is. It’s important to get the result. I think the result and the performance typifies the character and the strength in the group to be as united as they have been in a challenging period of results and nice that we got that validation tonight.”