Shared Governance Council--Need New Ideas!

[chenselmom]

I am an assistant manager and educator on a small med-surg pediatric unit. Our hospital has been Magnet for several years now, and has recently changed the hospital's model of Shared Governance.

Up to recently, our unit-based council has been energetic and productive. This last year or two, though, it has been very much the opposite. Honestly, the meetings have been little better than gripe sessions about the schedule, assignments, other departments, etc.

Does anyone out there have a strong unit-based shared governance council, that would be willing to share your strategies in keeping with the actual purpose of "shared governance?" Who is chair, and co-chair? How are they elected? How are meetings organized? How are meetings run? Who attends the meetings? Examples of projects completed? How often and how long are your meetings? How is information communicated to those who are not at the meetings?

I appreciate any feedback you can offer.

[ivorybunny]

We also have a Shared Governance model at our hospital. Our UBC- unit based council- has been up and running for about 3 years now. The CNO my hospital is a huge advocate for SG on the unit level with the focus on quality. We also have a UBC Board (which I'm the co-chair of) where the chairs from all the individual UBCs come together once a month to meet and discuss concerns and current projects. On my unit- we meet once a month. The chair person is a nurse, elected by peers, and I'm the secretary. We have a rather large unit (100+ staff) and have 9 members- 5 of which are nurses, 3 are techs, and 1 secretary. It's almost split equally between days and nights- we have found a day that works well for us with the schedule to allow those working days to come in on a day off- and where most of the night shift is working that night so they just come in a little early. There's lots of information out there in regards to how to run a meeting- we the use format of having a PAL... Purpose, Agenda, Length- the chair runs the meeting which lasts for 1.5-2 hours depending on the agenda. When a decision has been made by the council or when we need input- there are several ways we gather the information. We have a large dry erase board in our lounge that I keep up to date with the most current information after each meeting- allows for a place for staff to write their input on it as well. We have a weekly newsletter that is posted on the unit with updated educational information as well as info from the UBC. We also use the bed huddle at the beginning of each shift to relay any new information. We have a designed roll-out format to use when we are beginning a new project. Projects we have completed included Employee of the Quarter, FAQs- for admission to answer the most common questions we have, Patient Transportation Information Protocol- to minimize phone calls from radiology to nurses during peak times, and our latest project is to help increase HCAP scores in regards to informing patients about the side effects of medications... we have several rhymes posted on the medication computers to help remind the nurses to talk to their patients about side effects. If you have the same members on the UBC after 1-2 years, it may be time to let some of them rotate off and it may be a chance to revitalize the UBC with fresh new outlooks. I've been involved with Shared Governance since it started on the unit level at my hospital- please feel free to message me if you need any more information. Best of luck to you!!