self governance of a unit

[fedupnurse]

Hello out there! Until we get the Allnurses satelites open, lets face it, we are suck where we are!:stone . So my question is, since we have a mgmt team that is the absolute pits, do any of you practice self governance? A manager oversees the unit and has some responsibilities but the rest of it, hiring, scheduling, etc all comes from the staff. Anyone ever done it or heard of it and if so how does it work? We are an ICU with about 50 employees.

Thanks,

Desparate in NJ!

[susanmary]

Self governance -- another administrator's idea to take responsibility off of management and add responsibility to nurses. With a major reorganization, management instituted "self governance" on each unit. Works as long as staff "self governs" the way administration wants. Sure, we interview/recommend hiring; do the schedules -- takes the work off of management's hands. It sounds great, in theory, but when staff "self govern" and it is not to administration's liking -- not a pretty picture....don't have the autonomy one would think comes with "self governance." Staff gets the blame when things go wrong -- management gets the credit when the self governance works well. Just let me do my job .... give me the resources so that I can do it well ....

Sue

[fedupnurse]

That's pretty much what I thought, Sue. Guess we are going to have to have a mutiny and overthrow the managers and demand they get a competent crew in there. But then we would have to overthrow the entire administration for the entire healthsystem. Way out numbered there!

Thanks for the input!