Shared Governance

[LouisVRN, RN]

Looking for ideas/solutions regarding bringing shared governance to a unit. How should I go about getting people to participate? What kind of projects have your unit shared governance done? I would like to start with something simple yet helpful that the nurses can see the effect from, so they will be more likely to participate in larger projects that may not have as immediate results in the future. Thanks in advance for your guidance and input. :)

[CarrieRNC]

My unit, as well as all the units in the hospital I work at has shared governance. To start think about what nurses and ancillary members on the unit have gripes with. For instance, everyone has their opinion on how things should work on a unit, get a committee together, we call ours the "practice committee" and have people make suggestions on what they want changed then pick one thing and within the committee make a change! We also have a Safety committee, Policy and Procedure committee, Scheduling Committee to name a few:) Hope this helps, good luck!!

[Manatee111]

Shared governance is a joke. It doesn't really exist. They say we have it on our unit & we have our unit counsel meetings monthly & we give our input, but they still just do want they want to do & not what staff suggests.

[emtb2rn, BSN, RN, EMT-B]

We have shared governance in our er. The team includes rn's & techs. Management takes our suggestions seriously and has implemented quite a few.

If you don't have top down support, shared governance will not work.

I recommend starting with a brain-storming session. Each member of the team throws out an idea for something that would benefit the unit. NO discussion! This is simply a list. After all the ideas are listed, you then go through each item, discuss, discard and then develop recommendations. Start simple and cheap.

As for examples - created system for re-ordering supplies, developed protocol for securing pt belongings who are going to or, developed scheduling for having all glucometers in er checked at specific time, implemented yellow arm bands & non-slip socks for fall risk pts. Just some that were approved & implented in the past 4 months.

Good luck.