Shared Governance Essay

This paper aims to address and discuss about the leadership and management of the nurse leader interviewed. This experience was a great opportunity to witness first hand how a nurse leader cultivate and manage their staffs in real life setting. Moreover, it provides a great access to gain insight and knowledge about nurse leaders’ vital responsibilities and role diversities in the organizations they work with. Nurse leaders pay more specific and close attention in handling the staffs and most importantly, patient care.

Evaluating various shared governance structures, the councilor structure was determined to be most appropriate for the organization. Staff at all levels received education and training on the principles of shared governance as well as how to effectively lead shared governance councils. The BSWMC-MF shared governance structure consists of unit level councils, regional level councils, as well as Baylor Scott & White Health (BSWH) division and system level

Caramanica, L. (2004). Shared Governance: Hartford Hospital’s Experience. The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, Vol. 9. Retrieved from http://www.nursingworld.org/mainmenucatefories/ANAmarketplace/ANAperiodicals/OJIN/tableofcontents/volume92004/No1Jan04/HartfordHospitalsExperience.aspx

The purpose of this paper is to create a concept analysis and identify a nursing concept that is within a nursing theory. A concept analysis is a process where concepts and their characteristics are researched and clarified. The eight steps on conducting a concept analysis include selection of a concept used in a nursing theory, identification of the aims or purposes of the analysis, identification of possible use of the selected concept, determination of defining attributes, identification of model cases, identification of antecedents and consequences, and lastly definition of empirical referents (Walker & Avant, 2011). The nursing concept selected for this paper is “empowerment” within the nursing profession. The nursing theory from which the empowerment concept was obtained is Kanter’s Theory on Structural Empowerment. In order to empower someone, an individual needs the tools and resources to feel powered. According to Laschinger, Gilbert, Smith, & Leslie (2010), Kanter defines power as the ability to mobilize information, resources and support to get things done in an organization. The role of management is to provide employees with power tools that empower them to maximize their ability to accomplish their work in a meaningful way. Kanter goes on to describe two primary empowerment structures in organizations, first being the structure of opportunity and second the structure of power. The structure of opportunity relates to job conditions that provide

“Running a health care organization is a team sport. It is very important that all members of the team-whether on the medical staff, in management or on the board-understand the role of governance and what constitutes effective governance” (Arnwine, 2002). Running a hospital is a difficult task. Several factors need to be seriously thought of and considered in every decision and undertaking. Unfortunately, all the three important factors in governing a hospital is not always in harmony. As likened to a team sport, if the three major components are not working with each other as a team, there will be tension and a great divide will be experienced. And often times, the patients will be in the middle and will be greatly impacted. This writer believes that there are several factors that contribute to the tension that usually exists among the medical staff, the board and administration. One factor is the disconnect, where each entity is not seeing each other eye to eye and their visions may be different from each other. Another factor may be the lack of communication in order to bridge the gap and to build a respectful and a relationship wherein there is trust for each end every member of the group. Often times, the medical staff is concerned with ensuring that patients are cared for in a manner that their practice is protected as well as the patients are getting the appropriate care. On the other hand, the board of trustees may be focused in ensuring that that

The Health Care System 's purpose is to meet the physical and mental health needs of the communities in which they serve, these systems operate using people working within heal care facilities as well as other health delivery resources. One group of individual that help with facility operations are nursing administrators. Nursing Administrators contribute in managing along with directing the nursing care delivery system. Their leadership style, characteristics, communication strategies, including the way that they negotiate as well as manage conflicts can determine the quality of the healthcare services treat the facility provide as well as help to develop a set of guidelines to standardize the type and quality of the nursing services. (Cipriano, 2011) Together the Nurse Mangers work toward the same goals along with guiding nurses in their practice and contribute to the facilities successes. (Frankel, 2011) The nursing leaders are advocates who directly affect the quality of the nursing care along with also having a positive impact on healthcare through leadership.

Shared governance grew in popularity because of nurses’ dissatisfaction with hospitals administration but waned in interest in the 90’s. Shared governance has suffered from a variety of names and interpretations and although these definitions differ in their depth, common words like autonomy and empowerment and collaboration always arise.

Hess, discusses shared governance involvement with the nursing shortage that healthcare facilities are now facing. Hess focused on the purpose of shared governance, which is to give registered nurses control over their practice. This will help ensure nurse involvement in the workplace. In expressing his struggle, Hess clearly defines shared governance with the order of structures and processes involved within each organization (Hess, 2004). However, he does agree with its purpose that nursing shared governance helps with every situation a nurse may encounter in the healthcare setting. The following article further evaluates workplace advocacy in a way that relates to shared governance.

The division of nursing is in the early stages of implementing shared governance, which has resulted in a more formal staff communication through the various councils. In addition, departmental meetings and house wide town hall meetings take place. Email is the main form of daily leadership communication and is at times utilized with staff. However, accessibility has been difficult especially for the non-licensed staff. A monthly newsletter is published through a shared governance task force which includes a message from the CNO.

Nursing leadership is also one of the very important messages of the 2010 IOM report on nursing. The IOM calls to expand opportunities for nurses to lead. It advises that nurses need to be prepared and enabled as leaders in order to advance healthcare. One of the recommendations states that “expand opportunities for nurses to lead and diffuse collaborative improvement efforts” (IOM Report, 2010). In that regards, a research article (Sherman, 2011) points out that charge nurses on frontline of acute care setting are the

“The main questions this study sought to answer included: what is the lived experience of power to hospital clinical nurses; and what is the meaning of power to hospital clinical nurses in the context of their professional role?” (Fackler et al., 2015). Based on the fact that the goal of a phenomenological research is to achieve understanding of an experience from the perspective of the participants (Schmidt & Brown, 2015), I found these

Nursing leaders are crucial to any nursing organization. They motivate, empower, influence, and communicate the organization’s vision to create change within the organization. Great nursing leadership depends on great nursing leaders. This paper will define nursing leadership and describe leadership characteristics. It will further depict the democratic style and transformational theory of nursing leadership. While exploring leadership in action, this paper will illustrate the aspects of nursing.

Healthcare changes occurring today along with shrinking budgets and reimbursement rates for hospitals has forced institution CEOs to do more with less. Changes and restructuring of various health facilities require nursing leaders with flexibility and adaptability. Nurse leaders must also consider budgetary constraints, cost effectiveness, patient safety, and quality care while maintaining focus on improved patient outcome. The responsibility of ensuring patients receive safe and high quality care belongs to every employee in the hospital, including support staff such as IV therapy. In this hospital, this led to the development of a nurse director position to oversee the

Leadership traits associated with nurse executives are honesty, credibility, supportiveness, visibility, and flexibility. Nurse executives analyze nursing functions and empower nurses through participatory decision making, shared governance, and employee involvement. Nurse executives share the vision and goals of the hospital and promote application of a nursing theory into the nursing care delivery system. They anticipate the future of health care and nursing and serve as monitor, role model, and preceptor to lower level management (Upeniecks, 2003). Nurse executives in the Magnet program are required to have advance practice degrees with certification in their specialty (ANCC). Understanding evidence-based management and enabling the use of evidence-based knowledge provides the nurse executive with the tools to improve patient outcomes. The transformational leader will remove barriers to improvement and encourage outcome based thinking. While nurse leaders are charged with questioning the status quo, nurse managers in the transformational approach to leadership are charged with maintaining the status quo.

Leadership may mean different things to different people, the consensus opinion of experts in this field is that leadership is using power to direct and influence activities of people to achieve set goals or targets. Nursing leadership is all about every nurse providing, facilitating and promoting the best healthcare services to client and to the public. Leadership is a shared responsibility. (CNO 2012). The nursing profession need leaders that can build the capacity of nurses through mentoring, coaching, supporting, developing the expertise and management skills of nurses to make a difference to the quality of patient care at all levels of the profession ( McIntyre & McDonald, 2014 ). At the core of every leadership either political or managerial is power and how the leader uses it. While it is practically impossible to lead without power, how the nurse leader uses this power not only determine the leadership style but also the results or outcomes of what is achieved through the process.