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Shared Governance and its Impact on Professional development

Name: Stellah Batir

JMU RN-BSN Nursing Department

NSG: 471

Instructor: Dr. Julie Sutherland

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Introduction

In shared governance decision making is shared and discussed amongst the nurses.

Opportunity is given to the nurses to come up with ideas that support organizational growth. In

this way nurses give input, and they can participate in leadership and control of nursing practice.

In this paper, I will give insight on what shared governance is and share my experience during

one of the ICU shared governance meeting. Knowing the importance of such meetings to

professional involvement is important for career development. I will also highlight what took

place in the whole zoom meeting, staff members in attendance and the agenda they discussed

today while also discussing the professional impact.

Shared Governance and its Impact on Professional development

 Shared governance is defined as a leadership strategy where nurses in a particular unit

together with the nurse leaders work together in order to promote the nursing practice (Kanninen

et al., 2019). Shared governance is a way of inspiring, energizing, and motivating nurses because

in this way the nurses remain committed to a course or path to excellence. Bychkova (2016)

states that it is important to note that whenever nurses can air their grievances or suggestions to

the nurse leaders, excellent information can be passed on to help other units and the hospital as

a whole. According to Bychkova (2016), in order to create a working shared governance

platform an effective leadership and great multidisciplinary structure and culture is need. I

witnessed this today during the ICU shared governance at work. The nurse leader was open to

ideas that the nurses were suggesting.

My experience today was eye opening and a very positive one. The meeting took place

via zoom and it started on time. The nurse manager identified everyone and even introduced me

to the group who were very welcoming. This was a very nice gesture and I felt like a team
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member. Janice a member of the ICU shared governance kicked off by welcoming everyone and

read the agenda which was mostly about safety and effective communication. The minute taker

was identified, and the meeting proceeded. The nurse manager addressed safety issues that had

occurred and mentioned an occurrence on the crash cart which was missing an item. This was

very insightful because they take safety very seriously. The meeting continued by following an

agenda with Janice being the agenda leader. They discussed the importance of nurses taking

breaks and if they have had improvements on break times. There was a positive answer meaning

the nurses were getting breaks and the agenda was on track to success on this issue.

Insulin drips was also discussed and the importance and necessity of cosigning. Another

issue that came up in the meeting was the fact that the providers needed to address order

management faster and input orders quicker so not to keep patients waiting on orders already

talked about. The nurses noted that the delay was impacting the care of patients and they need to

“close the loop” as the assistant ICU manger stated. The nurse manger ensured that she would

mention it to the providers in the next meeting. Lastly, the meeting was adjourned after every

member had been given a chance to speak.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I feel like this meeting has impacted my professional life. To know that

there are members of the team that care about the safety of both patients and nurses is very

touching and I realize that I would like to be a member of shared governance committee. In the

meeting everyone has a voice, and they were all given a chance to participate. I also feel like I

gained so much information and I plan to follow up with my nurse manager on the process of

being on the committee of shared governance. This can really impact on the professional growth

because I would like to do administrative work in future.

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Reference

Bychkova, O. (2016). What is Shared Governance? University Management: Practice and

Analysis, 105(5), 110–121. https://doi.org/10.15826/umj.2016.103.049

Kanninen, T. H., Häggman-Laitila, A., Tervo-Heikkinen, T., & Kvist, T. (2019). Nursing shared

governance at hospitals – it’s Finnish future? Leadership in Health Services, 32(4), 558–

568. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhs-10-2018-0051