More nurses on health care organization governing boards

Unexpected Discovery

One study that initially revealed the lack of nurse board members within hospitals was led by Lawrence Prybil, MA, PhD, professor in the College of Public Health at the University of Iowa. The 2005 study of 14 nonprofit general hospitals found that only four of the 203 voting board members in the hospitals, or 2%, were nurses. Prybil was surprised when the data revealed such a low percentage.

“When you consider that approximately half of today’s hospital workforce are nurses, and how important nurses are in patient care and their impact on quality and cost, we thought there would be a stronger presence of nurse leaders on boards,” Prybil says.

Then in 2009, Prybil and his colleagues published a study of the structures, practices, and cultures of community health system boards. In that study, titled “Governance in High-Performing Community Health Systems,” the researchers collected survey data from 123 hospital systems throughout the country and found that the percentage of nurse board members was 2% — similar to the figure from the 2005 study.