Nursing Shared Governance

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Over the past several years, the demand for nursing staff has increased tremendously. In fact, the nursing shortage in the United States is anticipated to grow to 260,000 by 2025. (Buerhas, Auerbach, & Staiger, 2009). This foreseen shortage in nurses builds off of the knowledge that the average age of nurses is increasing, whilst the demand for nurses increases. More nurses are retiring or are close to retirement and an equal amount of nurses are not being recruited to organizations to take over the jobs of nurses that have left. In turn, many new nurses resign within their first year due to overwhelming workloads and stress. (Berry, Parasuraman, & Zeithaml, 1994). This issue is the root of nursing shortage concerns in healthcare organizations. …show more content…
It is the driving force behind how an individual behaves and handles situations. A group of highly educated registered nurses believed that to build character, and individual must be empowered. This group of women got together and compose an article titled “Nursing Shared Governance: Leading a Journey of Excellence” to express their ideas and encourage fellow nurses to grow professionally. The authors of this 2012 article are Mayra Kear, Pamela Duncan, Janet Fansler, and Kathy Hunt. Each of these ladies have furthered their education in nursing and hold Masters and Doctorate degrees in nursing. The purpose of their research was to enlighten healthcare organizations on the benefits of implementing a shared governance model, and empower registered nurses to ask for shared governance. Shared governance can be defined in one word: collaboration. (Kear, Duncan, Fansler, and Hunt, 2012). Shared governance occurs when all staff come together to address staff scheduling issues, staff education, and work delegation. Shared governance begins by selecting several councils of nursing staff to address different concerns. Refer to Figure A found below to illustrate the relationship between different councils. Collectively, all councils make up the shared governance board. The study focused on a three-thousand employee based healthcare organization and the impact shared governance had on the staff. The findings were positive. Nursing staff improved in their quality of care being delivered, less nurses felt overworked, and scheduling concerns were decreased. (Kear, Duncan, Fansler, and Hunt, 2012). A conclusion was drawn that through shared governance, an organization can improve nurse job satisfaction and reduce burnout and turnover

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