Date of Award

2018

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Nursing (MSN)

Committee Chair

Sharon Creed-Hall

Abstract

Shared governance is a management style where frontline nurses, nursing assistants, and unit secretaries share power, control, and responsibility in their work area. The primary purpose of the unit governance council is to evaluate their current practice for improvement as it correlates to patient care, patient satisfaction, and physician communication. A positive nursing work environment has been elevated as an essential component for improving nursing engagement and patient outcomes. The purpose of this study was to implement a unit-based shared governance council on two medical surgical units which share the same leadership team, staff, and have more than 85 employees. Since 2014, over 50 employees have resigned from these two units to work elsewhere. For the pre-survey and post-survey of The Index of Professional Nursing Governance (IPNG) Survey Tool, the sample consisted of 53 registered nurses in a convenience sample. Any full time, part time, or per diem nurse employed by the organization was eligible to be a participant in the study, this excluded any contracted agency nurses. The unit governance council was established with the members consisting of registered nurses, nursing assistants, and unit secretaries. This study used descriptive analysis to summarize and analyze the relationship between the quantitative data. Fifty-three pre surveys and post-surveys were sent out electronically through email of the research organization. Twenty-one pre-surveys were completed with a response rate of 39% and 18 post-surveys were completed for a response rate 31%. This research study showed shared governance is present on the unit.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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