Empowered Nursing with Professional Governance
For over 40 years, nursing organizations have implemented shared governance to empower nurses and support exemplary professional practice, role development, and decision making. “Shared” referred to the balance of accountability between the profession and the organization, where nurse-owned decisions were integrated with management decisions regarding nursing practice, particularly in the areas of competence, quality, and knowledge management. The intention of shared governance was to improve nurses’ work environment, satisfaction, and retention.
However, empirical evidence regarding the effectiveness of shared governance has been mixed because of how these structures were implemented and the extent to which nurses were able to make decisions about their practice. For nurses to be truly empowered, clinical nurse and nurse leader ownership of professional practice within these governance structures need to be clearly delineated. This ownership belongs to each practicing professional nurse.
