Essay Sample on Benefits of Shared Governance and Employee Engagement

Shared governance is the process and structure for ownership, equity, partnership, and accountability in an organization (Bieber & Joachim, 2016). It puts the responsibility, accountability, and authority for practice-related decisions in the hands of those who will implement the decision. Shared governance and being involved at the unit and institutional levels may bring great benefits both to nurses and the institution in the following ways:

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• It will empower nurses to apply their clinical expertise and knowledge to develop, sustain, and direct own professional practice (Bieber & Joachim, 2016).
• Shared governance enables nurses to network with each other, thereby boosting collaboration among units and departments (Kneflin et al., 2016).
• Shared governance and involvement of all nurses in decision-making bring unity and happiness at the workplace due to lack of stress (Kutney-Lee et al., 2016).
• It boosts the morale of all nurses in doing their work because they feel acknowledged and well-motivated to carry on with their duties (Ong et al., 2017).
• It brings greater satisfaction to all nurses because everyone has an opportunity to contribute their opinions to the decision-making of key practices that matters to them (Siller et al., 2016).
• It discourages the absenteeism of nurses from work. When nurses are properly engaged, they become committed to work because they have the same goal to achieve together. Therefore, it discourages unnecessary absenteeism.
• It promotes higher retention of nurses to an institution. Engaged nurses feel satisfied with their workplace and are eager to continue working there.
• It boosts the loyalty of nurses to their leaders (Bieber & Joachim, 2016). Nurses who are well-engaged will tend to stick around and respect their leaders because they are not subjected to pressure at work.
• It promotes better patient outcomes. Well-engaged nurses will focus on their service for patients leading to better outcomes.
• Shared governance and involvement of nurses promote leadership in the institution and enable nurses to be responsible and committed to the health care service (Kneflin et al., 2016).
• It promotes the provision of a better quality of health care to patients. Nurses are encouraged to implement all the skills and knowledge learned from education and training in providing patient care.
• It promotes convenient management of change either in the unit or department because all nurses are at par with the developing issues in the institution (Kneflin et al., 2016).
• Shared governance nurtures learning among nurses because they are free to share ideas with each other.
• It promotes teamwork. Engaging nurses allows them to come together and work as a team and get focused on achieving a common goal.

References

Bieber, P., & Joachim, H. (2016). Shared governance: a success story. Nurse Leader, 14(1), 62-66. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1541461215002645

Kneflin, N., O'Quinn, L., Geigle, G., Mott, B., Nebrig, D., & Munafo, J. (2016). Direct care nurses on the shared governance journey towards positive patient outcomes. Journal of clinical nursing, 25(5-6), 875-882. Retrieved from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jocn.13114

Kutney-Lee, A., Germack, H., Hatfield, L., Kelly, M. S., Maguire, M. P., Dierkes, A., Aiken, L. H. (2016). Nurse engagement in shared governance and patient and nurse outcomes. The Journal of nursing administration, 46(11), 605. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5117656/

Ong, A., Short, N., Radovich, P., & Kroetz, J. (2017). Ripple effect: Shared governance and nurse engagement. Nursing Management, 48(10), 28-34. Retrieved from https://journals.lww.com/nursingmanagement/Fulltext/2017/10000/Ripple_effect__Shared_governance_and_nurse.7.aspx

Siller, J., Dolansky, M. A., Clavelle, J. T., & Fitzpatrick, J. J. (2016). Shared governance and work engagement in emergency nurses. Journal of emergency nursing, 42(4), 325-330. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0099176716000052