Nurse Shared Governance

There is an evidence that the quality of patient care is directly impacted by the degree to which staff nurses are actively involved in shared governance and decision-making at two levels, the point of care level and at the organizational level (IOM, 2004).[20] Interestingly for the present study, the assessment of professional nursing governance indicated that nurses practice the first level of nursing shared governance which reflected that the nursing-related decisions in this hospital were taken primarily by nursing management with some staff nurses input. Nursing staff rated the highest assessment of professional nursing governance elements to “control over their professional practice” and reported that they participate in decisions which

Together, they can formulate a partnership of shared decision making for clinical and operational practices. [13] Similarly, Afeef et al. (2010) reported that staff nurses’ perceptions of their work environment being more closely related to the shared governance structure.[21] These findings support earlier findings from Fraith and Montgomery (2006) which indicated that increasing involvement of staff nurses result in a higher IPNG score with more sharing of the governance.[22] Also, Al-Faouri et al., (2014) found that nurses perceived control over their professional practice in their organization as the highest subscale and indicating that decisions shared between staff nurses and nursing

This could be due to the less involvement of nursing staff with hospital and nursing management in administrative decisions such as setting the hospital and work-related mission, philosophy, and goals and most of the conflict issues are being solved by the management with little participation from nursing staff. The same result was reported by Mahmoud (2016) who stated that nurses could participate with nursing management/administration in clinical practice decisions, however, nurses had limited ability to participate in committees that relate to strategic planning, multidisciplinary professionalism, and organizational budget.[26] Also, Kieft et al., (2014) (who conducted a qualitative study that showed nurses are not always in charge and cannot every time make their own decisions about nursing issues. Additionally, they reported that if nurses are more involved in the development of nursing policies, it would have a positive influence on patient care.