Shared Governance
With the rapid changes in American healthcare, hospitals all over the nation are working to keep pace with and adapt to the demands of the industry. Hospitals that are able to keep up with these changes are finding that old-fashioned centralized management models are giving way to more decentralized models that empower front-line staff nurses to make many of the key decisions that relate to direct patient care. This method of sharing the responsibility for decision making is referred to as Shared Governance.
At Kootenai Health, shared decision making is about engaging staff nurses and building a nurse-driven model of decision and action.
Key features of Shared Decision Making:
- It is grounded in clinical practice.
- Nursing staff are responsible, accountable, and have authority over all decisions related to nursing practice (practice, quality, and competence).
- Staff nurses are elected to the positions they hold in the shared governance structure by their peers rather than by management.
- Staff nurses define their own unit-based operational processes.
- Management, in a servant-leader role, provides support, encouragement, resources, and training necessary for success.
At Kootenai, shared decision making is primarily accomplished through the Professional Nursing Council (PNC). The PNC is essentially a large council of staff nurses elected from each area of the hospital where nurses work. PNC representatives are elected by their peers from the departments that they represent and are held to a high standard of professionalism and participation, because they represent nursing as it is practiced in their units.
Within the PNC, there are six interdependent specialty councils:
- Nursing Quality
- Professional Development
- Clinical Practice
- Nursing Work Environment
- Patient Care Leadership
- Research Round Table
To view a model of Kootenai's Shared Decision Making structure, click here.
At Kootenai, we've discovered that when nurses participate in the decision making for patient care and feel like a ‘part owner' in the success of the hospital, the result is increased employee satisfaction, better patient safety and care, increased professional autonomy, greater patient satisfaction, and shorter lengths of stay for our patients. When our nurses are able to do what they do best, everyone wins, and that's what matters most to us at Kootenai.