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Managers prove essential to the foundations of shared governance

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, September 22, 2006

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Under the shared governance paradigm, staff nurses exercise control over their practice and influence decisions that were once only controlled by managers. Up front, such an organizational model can leave managers worrying that they are no longer needed, when in fact they play a crucial role in educating staff about shared governance, executing the design, and ensuring that everything runs smoothly.

The manager's first task in instituting shared governance is to ensure that the four guiding principles of shared governance-partnership, accountability, equity, and ownership-are in effect, says Anne Jadwin, RN, MSN, AOCN, CNA, the director of nursing at Fox Chase Center in Philadelphia. At this point, it's important to ensure that your organization has fully transitioned from a bureaucratic model of decision-making to a shared model.

Once a manager is certain that the four guiding principles of shared governance are utilized in practice, he or she should continue to monitor the environment to ensure that

• nurses at every level are governing their own practice
• nurses are included in decisions that affect their practice
• quality partnerships among staff are being cultivated
• there is a distribution of influence among staff and managers

To learn more, go to Recruitment and Retention Monthly (RRM). For the cost of just three stories, you can get the entire September issue of RRM. Click here to choose between the PDF and HTML versions for just $30. Subscribers to the online version of RRM have free access to this article. Subscribers to the print newsletter can find this article in their September issue.

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